“To look at the faces of parents of children with congenital heart defects changing from nervousness and fear to relief and then joy is worth more than scoring a double century,” said veteran cricketer Sunil Gavaskar on Saturday at a charity dinner hosted by Rotary Club of Bangalore, Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevini Hospitals, and Heart to Heart Foundation in Bengaluru.
The charity dinner was hosted to enable free pediatric heart surgeries at Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevini Hospitals.
“In India, more than 3,00,000 children are born with congenital heart defects annually. Apart from being a devotee of Satya Sai Baba, the fact that these surgeries would give a second chance to the children who could go on to live very productive lives until 70 – 80 years got me involved in this,” said Mr. Gavaskar, who also chairs the Heart to Heart Foundation, which is dedicated to saving the lives of children born with congenital heart defects.
The third innings
He said that the cause of “second chance” resonated with him as in his cricketing career, the times his catch was dropped in various matches gave him a second cricketing life. “My first innings was as a cricketer, second was as a part time administrator and commentator. This is my third innings and it is the most fulfilling of them all.”
He added that along with fundraising, the foundation and Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevini Hospitals were also working on raising awareness about the disease.
From ‘The Hindu’ archives
The Rotary Club of Bangalore, which has already taken up 100 free heart surgeries under its ‘Breadwinner’ initiative, had also auctioned some memorabilia of Mr. Gavaskar, including 16 of his pictures from The Hindu archives, during the charity dinner.
When asked about his association with The Hindu, Mr. Gavaskar said, “My association goes back almost 50 years. Back then, The Hindu had a magazine called Sports and Pastime (now Sportstar). We used to regularly get it in our house and read it as it was the only English sports magazine at the time. “
On World Cup hopes
In an interaction with The Hindu, Mr. Gavaskar also said that like a billion Indians, he was also praying that Rohit Sharma would join Kapil Dev and Mahendra Singh Dhoni as a World Cup winning captain on November 19.
