They could be absolutely terribly bad, or they could play with passion, emotion
Geoff Boycott (left) and Sunil Gavaskar. Pic/Mid-day archives
Had Sunil Gavaskar and Geoff Boycott opened the batting together for a substantial period of time, it would’ve driven the connoisseurs into raptures. Both technically correct and compact, both blessed with great powers of concentration and the fortitude required to tackle the fastest bowlers at their freshest with a shiny new cherry, neither man took a backward step on the cricket field.
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Between them, they boast more than 18,000 Test runs; they might have been fierce rivals—Gavaskar promised to break, and then successfully broke, Boycott’s record for the most Test runs in 1983—but their off-field chemistry is undeniable. Their camaraderie was on view on a nostalgic Saturday afternoon at a city hotel as they came together for the fourth episode of Midwicket Stories, the former England opener flying down from Cape Town specifically for the event that was also attended by Gundappa Vishwanath, Syed Kirmani and UV Narayana Murthy of Infosys, among others.
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Simon Doull, the former New Zealand quick, donned the hat of the moderator and adroitly steered the discussion in several directions including asking Boycott which of Kapil Dev, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee or Imran Khan he would rank at the top of the list of all-rounders. “If I had to pick one of them, I’d pick Imran.
They were all slightly different,” the no-nonsense Boycott replied. “Kapil was a bowler who batted, wonderful bowler. I remember one magic ball he bowled to me—he bowled lots of good balls—at The Oval (1979) which moved away off the pitch, the first ball of the match. I watched it closely, played forwardish at it, and I missed it. He was a wonderful bowler, and he could bat,” Boycott said.
On Imran’s captaincy, Boycott said: “Anybody who can captain Pakistan is a genius because they are absolutely potty, aren’t they? Every time we played against them, we just didn’t know what side of the bed they were going to get up from. They could be absolutely terribly bad, or they could play with passion, emotion.”
Gavaskar, meanwhile, reflected on how he devised an ingenuous plan to eke runs out of his ace all-rounder. “Kapil would get 30s and 40s and then hit one in the air trying to attack and get out. I took him for a meal, spoke to him, but nothing seemed to work,” he said. “Then I wrote in my newspaper column that he would never get another Test fifty. In the very next game, on a turning track, he whacked 69 at the Wankhede [against Pakistan in 1979]. When he got out, the first thing he said when he came into the change room was, ‘Skip, I got fifty’. And that’s exactly what I wanted him to do!”
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