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As Sunil Gavaskar turns 75 today, it strikes you that he can’t be tagged on social media to mark the diamond jubilee year of his life. He has stayed away from the allure of the digital presence and instant chatter of celebrity life now. That allows him not to be drawn into small talk in over three decades of his statesman status as a commentator in cricket broadcasting. As an astute technician, he seems to be aware of what he has chosen not to fiddle with, perhaps with the same sagacity with which he judged the off-stump for leaving the ball.
But the current crop of cricket watchers is more likely to know him for what he does in the commentary box and not for how he did what he did on the cricket pitch. That’s a pity, and perhaps a casualty of the recency bias, as an analyst has pointed out. For those who cared to watch, and it didn’t matter how many were there, he could elevate the 22 yards of pitch into a sublime site of crafty technique and intense concentration. That’s an important point – the scale of the match and the number of spectators didn’t matter to the technician in him.
