New Delhi, July 9 (IANS) Indian batting legend Sunil Manohar Gavaskar – who remains one of the most celebrated and powerful personalities in the world of cricket even 20 years after retiring as a player – turns 58 Tuesday.
Gavaskar heads one of the most important committees of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the technical committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
He turned to media work full time after retirement, including television commentary. He even presented a few cricket serials on TV and continues to pen his weekly column on cricket.
Gavaskar played 125 Tests and 108 One-day Internationals between 1971 and 1987 and had almost all Test batting records in his kitty when he retired with a masterly 96 against Pakistan in Bangalore in March 1987.
Some of those records have fallen to the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Allan Border and Ricky Ponting. But the Gavaskar legacy continues long after his retirement.
The Mumbai native is currently in England but his family and the company he co-founded in 1985, Professional Management Group (PMG), will celebrate the occasion Tuesday.
“We will celebrate his birthday in the office and there will be a lunch on the occasion,” Sumedh Shah, PMG co-founder, told IANS over phone from Mumbai.
The former India captain’s mother Minal, who is in Mumbai these days instead of her native city Pune, said she would also wish her son.
“We will wish him on his birthday if he calls tomorrow,” Minal told IANS from Gavaskar’s Sportsfield Apartments in Mumbai.
Shah said he would himself call and wish Gavaskar, the first man in world cricket to score more than 10,000 runs and cross the 30-centuries mark.
“His family, including son Rohan and daughter-in-law, is also out of the country. But we will call him to wish him and also send an e-mail,” said Shah, Gavaskar’s business partner for many years.
Indo-Asian News Service
