Sunil Gavaskar's poor record in ODIs

[TQ89]

Recently i started watching some of gavaskars old innings. I am hugely impressed by his technique and temperament. No wonder he finds a place in everybodys eleven as opener. The innings I liked most are his last FC ton 188 for ROW, his centuries against pak in karachi 1978 and of course his 221 against eng.

No doubt he is rated highly by all of his peers and guys who played against him. Which leads to my question. Why was he a poor player in ODI's?

I dont mean the 1975 wc match. I have seen some odi matches highlights of the 80's where he took more than 100 balls for his fifty. I mean he had all the shots in the book as seen in his 221 in oval 1979 and was very sound technically. Yet in one day he never seemed good.

And you will hardly hear anybody talking about his one day game. The other indian batsmen batted fluently in the 80's and by fluently i dont mean 100 strike rate. Azharuddin, srikanth, shastri when he was lower order and dilip vengarskar were all test batsmen who could adapt to one day game and played with good strike rate of that time. Why couldn't an ATG like Sunny adapt his game to one day format?

 

[Napa]

Recently i started watching some of gavaskars old innings. I am hugely impressed by his technique and temperament. No wonder he finds a place in everybodys eleven as opener. The innings I liked most are his last FC ton 188 for ROW, his centuries against pak in karachi 1978 and of course his 221 against eng.

No doubt he is rated highly by all of his peers and guys who played against him. Which leads to my question. Why was he a poor player in ODI's?

I dont mean the 1975 wc match. I have seen some odi matches highlights of the 80's where he took more than 100 balls for his fifty. I mean he had all the shots in the book as seen in his 221 in oval 1979 and was very sound technically. Yet in one day he never seemed good.

And you will hardly hear anybody talking about his one day game. The other indian batsmen batted fluently in the 80's and by fluently i dont mean 100 strike rate. Azharuddin, srikanth, shastri when he was lower order and dilip vengarskar were all test batsmen who could adapt to one day game and played with good strike rate of that time. Why couldn't an ATG like Sunny adapt his game to one day format?

The other Indian batsmen you mention came much later and had more time to adapt to the new format.

Gavaskar for most of his career looked up to Bradman whose centuries tally he finally beat.

 

[Sanzcool]

Shastri isn't a fluent batsman lol, he is probably equivalent to Sunny Bhai in terms of scoring

 

[Justcrazy]

Gavaskar was not aggressive batter , he valued his wicket , maybe that is the reason he did not express himself enough.

 

[TQ89]

I know. that is why i mentioned him in lower order. As top order, he was like manoj prabhakar i guess. Used to keep blocking way too many balls & would kill the chase

 

[TQ89]

The other Indian batsmen you mention came much later and had more time to adapt to the new format.

Gavaskar for most of his career looked up to Bradman whose centuries tally he finally beat.

Still Bro, the record that bradman held was of tests. No body can doubt Sunny in tests. He is among the best test players of all time. The greatest test opener in my opinion. The reason I am wondering is because batsmen who were inferior to him in terms of technique in tests were way much better than him in ODI's (example his own team mates).

Vengarskar made his debut in the seventies also. He was a fantastic odi player. Same goes for other batsmen of the 70's ( zaheer, javed, chappell, glen turner and WI batsmen) who were exposed to test cricket first & played odi afterwards.

 

[Arsalan Pro]

He batted pretty slowly.

 

[idrizzy]

Same can be said for YK. Great test record, poor ODI record.

 

[Cuts_and_cuts_hard]

He batted pretty slowly.

Gavaskar could actually bat very fast when he decided to. Look at some of these inning in tests :

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63351.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63352.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63450.html

Problem was two fold:

1) He did not adapt to the needs of ODIs because the mindset in those days was still that openers should set a platform. Even great ODI openers like Greenidge and Haynes donot have higher SR than him.

2) He did not take it seriously enough and lacked motivation in shorter formats, which he has admitted.

Both combined to make him a poor ODI player, even though he had the tools to be great

 

[MMHS]

That 36* (60 Overs ) has become a taboo for Sunny, but his ODI stats of 35+/62+ is quite decent in the era he played. For example, in similar time, Grineedge's record stands at 45/65, Border's 31/71, Javed 42/67.

He wasn't the same ODI player he was in Test, but much better than 36* (60 overs).

 

[The_Odd_One]

He was not good enough for shorter formats. Plenty of test batsmen from his time outperformed him in ODIs.

 

[Hasan123]

His style of play suited test cricket

 

[Stallion__]

He was a consistently improving as an ODI player. It took him few years to realize that you have to show more urgency in ODIs as compared to tests. In first half of his career, he averaged 23@57. In the second half, his numbers improved to 45@66. In his last year as an international player, he was scoring at an average of 49 and has SR of 73 (better than our current openers in CT), including a century against NZ at greater than run a ball. And New Zealand's bowling attack used to be most economical during that time.

 

[Nikhil_cric]

That 36* (60 Overs ) has become a taboo for Sunny, but his ODI stats of 35+/62+ is quite decent in the era he played. For example, in similar time, Grineedge's record stands at 45/65, Border's 31/71, Javed 42/67.

He wasn't the same ODI player he was in Test, but much better than 36* (60 overs).

Would it be fair to say that Sunny became a much better ODI player at the fag end of his career eg. in the 87 World Cup where he was scoring very rapidly?

 

[Justcrazy]

That 36* (60 Overs ) has become a taboo for Sunny, but his ODI stats of 35+/62+ is quite decent in the era he played. For example, in similar time, Grineedge's record stands at 45/65, Border's 31/71, Javed 42/67.

He wasn't the same ODI player he was in Test, but much better than 36* (60 overs).

You are right , he is known because of that Knock in shorter format.

 

[Justcrazy]

Would it be fair to say that Sunny became a much better ODI player at the fag end of his career eg. in the 87 World Cup where he was scoring very rapidly?

He finished with hundred off around 86 balls.

 

[MMHS]

Would it be fair to say that Sunny became a much better ODI player at the fag end of his career eg. in the 87 World Cup where he was scoring very rapidly?

Actually, that's applicable for most ODI players in early days. Probably, it was mid to late 80s that teams started to focus on ODI & lots of thoughts were given into batting, which eventually resulted in to much dynamic & diversified batting strategy in 90s on wards. This is why, in ODI I actually rate Viv & Zaheer much, much higher than their stats - in 70s & early 80s, they played the game world started to visualize 20 years later. Mazid Khan & Farooq Engineer as well, just a shed below ATG in ODI because of their very short career - what today is standard for an ODI opener, Mazid accomplished in 70s, while Engineer actually is the first modern ODI WK, who made the team on batting merit, batted in top 3 & batted aggressively.

I feel, Gavaskar was lost in his role profile - for most part of career, played for a weak team, hence his entire focus was to preserve early wickets, which often resulted into restricting himself. To a laser extent, Grineedge was same - far, far aggressive & destructive batsman than his SR suggest, and most people would rate Desi Haynes as a better ODI opener than GG. For few matches, Sunny batted at 5/6 for a good Indian team & he was quite successful there, which indicates extra caution as opener. At the same time, it's true that he was self-obsessed to a level of selfishness, which didn't help expressing himself as opener, in a game limited by balls.

 

[Rayyman]

Gavaskar could actually bat very fast when he decided to. Look at some of these inning in tests :

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63351.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63352.html

Ravi Shastri 49(0) LOL that killed me

 

[JaDed]

From anything i read apparently India and the board didn't take a liking for the format till somehow they managed to win the WC,our previous WC records could speak for that as well.

Another aspect was our timid approach to games then,genuinely minnow mentality but thanks to Kapil,Srikanth and few others we finally gave up on that and slowly started to play smartly,sadly 90's again was terrible and it wasnt until 2000 where we finally started expressing ourselves.

Remember Kapil having to sit out a match because of playing an extravagant shot in a test match

 

[todfod 11]

actually gavaskar hated ODIs and did not want it to succeed and take over test cricket. thats why he never tried hard in ODI but later when it was clear that ODI are more loved he started scoring faster

 

[Cuts_and_cuts_hard]

Ravi Shastri 49(0) LOL that killed me

You're looking at the 6s column, not number of ball.

 

[Swashbuckler]

That 36* (60 Overs ) has become a taboo for Sunny, but his ODI stats of 35+/62+ is quite decent in the era he played. For example, in similar time, Grineedge's record stands at 45/65, Border's 31/71, Javed 42/67.

He wasn't the same ODI player he was in Test, but much better than 36* (60 overs).

I read somewhere that he played that 36* purposely because he was angry at being sidelined for captaincy by Venkatraghavan. It was some sort of protest aimed at the board, Sunny was very selfish and vindictive those days. He never got along with Bedi, Kapil and even Vengsarkar in the later days.