Monday, July 10, 2006

Flashback to a Master

It had been a wish for a long long time, to pen down my bit of a eulogy for the original master of Indian cricket, a eulogy from an ordinary fan, but a die-hard one of the one and only Sunil Gavaskar, and how I lived and died with every century or a duck scored by him, every success or failure was as much mine as it was his (and I am sure so would have been the case with million others).

And what better place to publish it but on the blogosphere, and what better day than this, when the football fever is on its way to logical conclusion, and that it happens to be his 57th birthday, though it seems just the other day when he last took guard against Philip DeFreitas in the Reliance World cup, lost his stump and left in a huff leaving the Wankhede (and us watching on the TV) numbed as if in a funeral. And also because an Indian team has just returned from the West Indies with a Test series victory after 35 years since the first one was achieved when Lord Relator was still alive.

Obviously because who he is, many have talked about him, many have written about him, by his peers, seniors, cricket enthusiasts, critics, other giants of the game, journalists, they still do! For he is still around in different avatars on the telly, ICC cricket committee, on various panels and ofcourse with his own inimitable columns.

But this is about his flannelled days when he ruled supreme and when I was still not in my teens and got hooked on to him and his cricket and into my world of cricket in my neck ’o’ the woods.

This is a trip down memory lane, into a period from the eyes of a child, adolescent and an adult over the last 32 years that I have followed him and cricket. Memories can be tricky, but in this one case I still remember every bit as if it was just the other day.

I will try to pen down over the next few posts, all the memories that I have and feelings I experienced whenever and wherever ‘The Master’ featured. All this, when I was miles away from him. In a way it's about half my autobiography!!!!!!!!

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