Sunil Gavaskar reveals about the time he asked Sachin not to let Wasim put his arm around him

During the launch of Rajdeep Sardesai’s book, ‘Democracy’s XI – The Great Indian Cricket Story’, some of the veterans of Indian cricket came forward to talk about few of the incidents first hand.

One of them was from Little Master, Sunil Gavaskar when he talked about the time he advised Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar not to let Sultan of Swing Wasim Akram put his arms around him.

Stalwarts present in the event such as Sachin Tendulkar, Sunny Gavaskar, Ajit Wadekar, Mohammad Azharuddin and many others, talked in detail about a variety of incidents, spanning across as many as seven decades of Indian cricket.

“If you are walking out to toss with Wasim Akram, do not let Akram put his arm around you. It is pretty much patronising kind of a way, which sometimes they tend to do,” recalled Sunil Gavaskar according to DNA.

On Kapil Dev

While talking about the various captains who have led the Indian team, the name of Kapil Dev cropped up as one and all including Gavaskar spoke highly of the World Cup-winning captain.

“Kapil made everybody believe they can play for India and captain India. Before that, there was one ‘naam ke vaaste’ player from non-metros as a part of the touring side. Kapil was a flamboyant cricketer who got the crowds in,” further added Sunny. Gavaskar then talked about the culture of unity within the Indian team across the generations.

“Can’t imagine thinking of a player as anything other than a cricketer. It never occurred to us that he was a Maharashtrian or a South Indian. All that mattered was how good he was and how he could make our team win,” Gavaskar said. Sachin Tendulkar also added a few words to this topic. “There was no caste, creed, religion in cricket. We all had one goal, and that was to win,” concluded Tendulkar.