The story of India's greatest cricketing family

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  • Sunil Gavaskar is one of the biggest names in Indian cricket history.

    Cricket’s grand traditions have been passed down from father to son, shared between brothers or indulged in an eager nephew by a doting uncle. Sport is infectious and those who pick up a bat or toss a ball between their hands, do not let go of it easily. Especially when a family member they look up to is there to pass on their wisdom.

    Over the years, many families have enriched the history of cricket. Australia has the Chappell brothers, England the Grace family, Pakistan the Mohammads of Karachi. India herself boasts of the Amarnath men and their grand patriarch Lala.

    Yet, there was another clan whose importance in the history of Indian cricket cannot be disputed. They were slightly unusual in a sense. These four individuals are not usually spoken of in the same breath – see Mark Waugh, by contrast, whose career is incomplete without some reference to his minutes older twin brother Steve – and they were not all related by blood.

    This group of subjects each experienced varying degrees of success, and belonged to three completely different eras in Indian cricket. A combination of blood and marriage bound Madhav Mantri, Sunil Gavaskar, Rohan Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath together, and between them their careers span 50 years of Indian cricket.

    THE GODFATHER

    Perhaps the same fate that later hung over the careers of Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar first manifested itself back in the 1950s. Mantri hardly got a chance for India, playing a mere four Tests between 1951 and 1955, as he struggled to break into a settled side.

    Mantri scored 67 runs from his eight Test innings, achieving a highest score of 39 while batting at the top of the order against England. He has nine dismissals to his name; eight catches and one stumping. He was not as spectacular a cricketer as Goel or Shivalkar, but Mantri’s solid, reassuring consistency brought him rewards in first-class cricket.

    The length of his career – from 1941-42 to 1967-68 – is remarkable and he was keeping wicket well into his forties. During this time, 95 first-class matches brought 4,403 runs at 33.86 with a highest score of 200, 192 dismissals, seven hundreds and 26 fifties. In the Ranji Trophy alone, he scored 2,787 runs over two-and-a-half decades.

    He would have celebrated his 95th birthday last week had he lived to see it. Unfortunately, in May 2014, Mantri passed away at the age of 92 – India’s oldest living Test cricketer at the time.

    He was the maternal uncle of the elder Gavaskar.

    THE SUPERSTAR

    There is very little that remains to be said about Sunil Gavaskar. For 16 years, 125 Tests and 108 ODIs, he was India’s rock, his skill at the crease complementing a truly fortified defence. After a masterful debut series against the West Indies in 1971, there was no stopping him.

    Gavaskar’s often successful duels with the all-conquering West Indies side of that era that boasted the most fearsome bowlers in the game’s history, have become legendary. So much of the Mumbai man is raw, numerical achievement, and yet his legend is even greater. He was the first man to 10,000 Test runs and for a long time held the records for most Test hundreds (34) and the highest Test score by an Indian (236 not out).

    His brilliance, however, was not erratic but consistent, not capricious but formidable, not explosive but awesome.

    A long India career brought captaincy, a World Cup win and more success abroad than at home (a higher average more hundreds, and only 12 fewer runs). Since retirement in 1987, Gavaskar has become a well-known voice in the media, covering several major events involving the Indian team and Indian players.

    He is Mantri’s nephew, the father of Rohan Gavaskar and the brother-in-law of Vishwanath.

    THE COLOSSUS

    Gundappa Vishwanath married Sunil Gavaskar's sister

    Gundappa Vishwanath married Sunil Gavaskar’s sister

    He did not have the sheer weight of statistical achievement to his name like his brother-in-law, but Vishwanath was one of those rare players who scored clutch runs with eye-catching poetry. In a little more than thirteen years, Vishwanath accumulated admirable numbers for India. As commendable as they are, 91 Tests, 6,080 runs and 14 hundreds tell only half his story.

    Under the captaincy of his brother-in-law Sunil, Vishwanath played 40 of his 91 Tests, scoring 2305 runs at 41.90 – almost identical to his career Test average of 41.93.

    India won 20 of the Tests he played in, with Vishwanath scoring 1637 runs – 26.92% of his total career haul – and four hundreds at 49.60. Glory, however, was the currency Vishwanath was most comfortable trading in, and there exist a hundred stories that can truly be told about his fearless batting at critical moments.

    Trailing 1-2 in the series at home to the great West Indies side of the day, Vishwanath produced a heroic innings – defying the terrifying Andy Roberts’ march to seven wickets with nearly four hours of resistance. His 14 boundaries were part of an unbeaten 97 that proved to be a match-winning score. India had levelled the series 2-2.

    His marriage to Sunil Gavaskar’s sister Kavita tied him to the family.

    THE PRODIGY?

    Rohan Gavaskar failed to live up to expectations in international cricket

    Rohan Gavaskar failed to live up to expectations in international cricket

    He can speak of a fairly respectable first-class record – 6,938 runs from 181 innings at 44.19; 38 clutch wickets – but Rohan Gavaskar was, perhaps more than any other in Indian cricket history, weighed down the most by his family name.

    It’s not easy being the son of Sunil and the younger Gavaskar was unable to successfully shake off that tag. His career was eventually defined by it. He was a quite useful bowler in List-A cricket – 58 wickets at 35.55, an economy of 4.96 and a wicket every 42.9 balls – and it was in the game’s shorter format that he made his appearances for India.

    All 11 of his ODIs came in the year 2004. His run in the side began on the tour of Australia in 2003-04, in a tri-series that also involved Zimbabwe. Gavaskar gathered 90 runs from six innings with a highest score of 54. His appearances then became more scattered, and the last of them came against Pakistan at Edgbaston in September.

    The Bengal man only ever bowled 12 overs in international cricket, collecting just one wicket – that of Andrew Symonds at Brisbane.

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