Celebrating Sunny

Sunny may not be the commentator that you would die to listen to, in fact you might choose to die than listen to him at times! But as bad as he is as a commentator, that should take nothing away from him as a cricketer. He was a colossal figure not just of Indian Cricket but World Cricket during his playing days. I find it irritating when people club him with the likes of Boycott. Sunny can't be insulted more. I was reading a Peter Roebuck article in SMH about Sachin today. In that article, he goes on to explain why he rates Sachin as the best batsman in the last 60 years. Along the way he describes the significance of SMG in beautiful words:

"No batsman has been as rewarding to watch in the past decades, and none has been superior. Among past masters, Viv Richards and Sunil Gavaskar stand out. Gavaskar ruled with meticulous technique. Often he played within himself, relying on patience and precision to build his score. As much was the duty of the stoical opening batsman. Not that he was always cautious. Indeed, he played some of the most breath-taking innings the game has known. Then his range of shots was extraordinary and the execution vibrant. Before him, too, Indian batsmen were regarded as frail. After him the word was never again spoken. That is the measure of his triumph."

For all those guys who were brought up on the stories of Sunny's legendary patience and the ignominy of batting through 60 overs for an undefeated 36, please reread those words - "Indeed, he played some of the most breath-taking innings the game has known. Then his range of shots was extraordinary and the execution vibrant". My dad used to tell me that no one had the mental strength that Sunny had. He said that Sunny would never play a flashy shot outside the off stump, even if you keep feeding him there all day. But what he didn't tell me was that he scored a hundred off 94 balls against a bowling attack boasting of Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall! How many test hundreds has Sachin or Lara scored at better than run a ball? So surely it was not a question of ability to counter attack. Its something more...

His style of batting had a lot to do with the state of India Cricket during his times. He played for a champion team in Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy for sure. But what's comfortably forgotten about Mumbai's supremacy in Indian Domestic Cricket is that for such a successful team, they predominantly played defensive cricket. Their first idea is to shut the opposition out of the game and if there is still time left, then go for a victory.

And when he started playing for India, we were so hopelessly bad as a team that we were happy to just compete with the top sides. So naturally when competing is the height of your ambitions, survival is your natural instinct. Ironically had Sunny been more attacking and aggressive, it wouldn't have helped the team's cause as much. What if he scores 110 off 158 balls and gets out, the rest of the batting would fold quickly and the opposition would amass a huge score and have time to bowl us out again. Remember Sachin's 155 at Bloemfontein? So in a lot of ways, it was appropriate that Sunny rarely allowed room for any indulgence because that could have been adverse to the team. But on the few occasions that he did, he was as good as any.

For someone who was brought up on the misleading stories on Sunny, some cricket classics video in Star Sports led me to the discovery of Sunny's attacking batsmanship. It was an ODI against NZ in Brisbane in the Benson& Hedges world series Cricket (not the Championship of Cricket). NewZealand had batted first and set India a target of 260 to win off 50 overs. By the way, 260 was a bloody good score in ODI's of those days especially in Australia where the boundaries are so long.

Out came Cheeka and Sunny in pursuit of a huge score and guess what - they decided to swap their roles. Cheeka played relatively sedate cricket but Sunny really took on Hadlee and Chatfield. It was just a cameo of 27. But what a brilliant cameo it was. Almost on par with Sachin's 40 in Nairobi. 27 off 17 balls with four 4's and a six. More than the boundaries, it was the manner in which he was scoring those boundaries that made me sit absolutely dumbstruck in front of the idiot box. I had never imagined a picture of Sunny playing across the line because my dad didn't allow me to think so. He said Sunny would never do that. Well,I saw him do that and do that in such a breathtaking fashion. That's when I realized Sunny was GOD too....in his own way.

This is just a random post triggered by Peter Roebuck's beautiful words. Shall discuss "The legend of Sunny" in detail in a later post.