Sunil Gavaskar - The world's first bionic man

[quick4mindia]

THAT I agree Patil was the worst offender of all, he was the laziest goon and he and Amarnath were damn horrible in this department, they couldn't or better yet wouldn't bend their back to take even the simplest of catches. On the other hand Srikanth and even Vengsarkar (both used to field at slips or silly point for spinners) did there job of close in catching. If i had to rank Indian teams off 1980's by fielding it would be something like this

Azhar
Kirmani (wk)
Binny
Madan Lal
Kapil
Srikanth
Shastri
Vengsarkar
Gavaskar
Azad
Yashpal
Sandhu
Amarnath
finally Patil

Well it seems that you put shashtri in very high regards. fair enough. he had a sensational start to his career. he performed really well in the initial 3-4 years. i remember late 80s and early ninties just before he retired when the crowd started chanting Shastri Hai Hai (down with shastri) at mere sight of him. He batted shabbily and whenever the captain felt that the opposition were scoring too slow shastri was brought back into the bowling. But it was his fielding at the boundary ropes which irritated the spectators the most.

 

[kvemuri]

Well it seems that you put shashtri in very high regards. fair enough. he had a sensational start to his career. he performed really well in the initial 3-4 years. i remember late 80s and early ninties just before he retired when the crowd started chanting Shastri Hai Hai (down with shastri) at mere sight of him. He batted shabbily and whenever the captain felt that the opposition were scoring too slow shastri was brought back into the bowling. But it was his fielding at the boundary ropes which irritated the spectators the most.

Actually i always thought it was his batting that was the most pathetic followed by his bowling and as far as fielding on the ropes is concerned, I don't remember his fielding per se that much. But I definitely blame him for the semi finals loss to Eng in the 1987 WC, I still remember him dancing down the track and then defending (not even rotating the strike) to Eddie Hemmings and creating enormous pressure on the batsmen at the other end, to which Azhar, Pandit, More and Chetan Sharma all perished. This after Kapil had setup a good opportunity to win with a quick fire 30 and Azhar was motoring on very well at the other end.

 

[quick4mindia]

Actually i always thought it was his batting that was the most pathetic followed by his bowling and as far as fielding on the ropes is concerned, I don't remember his fielding per se that much. But I definitely blame him for the semi finals loss to Eng in the 1987 WC, I still remember him dancing down the track and then defending (not even rotating the strike) to Eddie Hemmings and creating enormous pressure on the batsmen at the other end, to which Azhar, Pandit, More and Chetan Sharma all perished. This after Kapil had setup a good opportunity to win with a quick fire 30 and Azhar was motoring on very well at the other end.

Well here i would sympathise with shastri to the extent that he was not the only one to have lost the match for india. Maninder was the trump card for India and everyone else was playing pretty well. But kudos should go to Gooch who swept the match away from india and our Captain did not have any strategy to counter that.
And then many of our batsmen failed in that match who otherwise had been performin pretty decent in the series.

 

[sideshowtim]

on sunil: it's all well and good to say you'd play 365 days for india. whether your body could keep up with you or not is a completely different story...

 

[sirjeremy11]

on sunil: it's all well and good to say you'd play 365 days for india. whether your body could keep up with you or not is a completely different story...

Really, all he would have to do is block and field.