Of Gavaskar's first lesson and Boycott's favourite all-rounder

It was an afternoon when rib-tickling anecdotes and interesting tidbits intertwined with some serious talk on cricket as two of the greatest openers in Test history - Gavaskar and Boycott - held sway with former New Zealand pacer Simon Doull anchoring the cricket talk show Midwicket Stories in Bengaluru on Saturday.

Bengaluru: What was Sunil Gavaskar’s best cricketing lesson? Who is Geoffrey Boycott’s favourite all-rounder? What does Gavaskar think of modern-day cricket? How does Boycott assess England’s “Bazball”? How did Sachin Tendulkar became Yorkshire’s first overseas batter?

It was an afternoon when rib-tickling anecdotes and interesting tidbits intertwined with some serious talk on cricket as two of the greatest openers in Test history - Gavaskar and Boycott - held sway with former New Zealand pacer Simon Doull anchoring the cricket talk show Midwicket Stories here on Saturday.               

“My best cricketing lesson was from my maternal uncle (former India cricketer) Madhav Mantri,” noted Gavaskar. “I had gone to his place with my mother and saw many of his caps, jerseys, blazers and such stuff... All neatly placed. I wanted to wear a cap but my uncle sternly asked me not to touch any. I told him, ‘but you have so many...’ And his answer was, “Because I earned all of them. To have one, you have to earn one.”

Tendulkar became the first overseas cricketer to play for Yorkshire in 1992 when the County side broke its long-held tradition of playing only Yorkshire-born players. What led to change?  

“It was in the 1990s when other Counties had top foreign players playing for them while we stopped producing great players,” Boycott said. “We couldn’t compete with the rest as the gap (in quality) was getting wider. It was then that I suggested to the Yorkshire board that we sign a foreign player. I insisted on changing the (only Yorkshire-born) rule... Obviously, there was a lot of opposition to the change but I could convince them. And that’s how we got Sachin Tendulkar on board as the first overseas player. He wasn’t great (then), he was just 19 but he was the right choice. He was very nice with everyone... The members, the sponsors, the fans. He did really well in all aspects.” 

Gavaskar and Boycott’s era also overlapped with careers of Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Richard Hadlee. It was a rare phase in cricket’s history when four of the all-rounders of such extraordinary skills played at the same time and choosing one between the four is a tough task to say the least.    “They were all slightly different,”  Boycott began. “Kapil was a bowler who batted, wonderful bowler. Richard Hadlee, like I told you, was a fantastic bowler. Best line bowler at pace. Batting, not great but he could get a few. Botham, in his pomp, a magnificent bowler, like Kapil. Big shoulders, big a***, narrow waist, helped him bowl the outswing. That bowling of that quality helped his batting, I felt. And he never did play for England as a batsman. But while he was bowling well and batting, he was outrageously good at both.

“But if I had to pick one of them, I would pick Imran. His bowling was fantastic. He could bat – not as free as Kapil, not as free as Botham, but he could bat sensibly. But his captaincy. Of all of them, his captaincy. Anybody who can captain Pakistan is a genius because they are absolutely potty, aren’t they? And I am giving him credit because in his own way, he would tell them this and that and he would do it himself. Somehow he knew how to get them going. I think I got to give him that. In fact, if I was to pick a World XI, of all the people I played against, I would pick him as the captain.”

While stating that he was happy with the era he played in, Gavaskar marveled at the way cricket has metamorphosed now with so many strokes and variety of balls.    

“The modern game is hard, at the same time it is great entertainment because there are so many more shots, you see more sixes and boundaries. You also see a variety of shots -- the reverse sweep, the switch hit, the scoop-- and deliveries, which were not seen earlier even in Test cricket. Which I think is fantastic.

“We were brought up to see off the new ball, to take the shine off the ball. Modern cricketers take the shine off the ball by hammering it to the fence. It is a whole different approach and attitude. I like to see the kind of entertaining batting, bowling and fielding offers. Thrilling to see the players diving flying in the air taking some incredible catches.”

Boycott felt England, the architects of so-called Bazball, had gone too far with their no-holds-barred approach. 

“They want to save England cricket, the whole of Test cricket. But no sir, the objective is to win a Test match or series,” he emphasised. “We lost two Ashes Tests and with it the series, playing stupid cricket, and the same happened against India. They came to the series saying we have done practice in Abu Dhabi and all. But players like (Ravichandran) Ashwin, (Ravindra) Jadeja and Kuldeep (Yadav) got their wickets not without talent.

“Heavens! Those three have some 900 wickets among them in Tests. And we have a captain (Ben Stokes) who does not bowl. So, play with aggression, which is fair, but have that bit of common sense too.”