Sunil Gavaskar remembers how Garry Sobers helped him “keep place in side”

As Indian cricket celebrates 50 years of his iconic Test debut, Sunil Gavaskar Wednesday stated he wouldn’t have lasted this lengthy had it not been for a few “lives” given by none aside from the good Sir Garfield Sobers.
Gavaskar was talking at a ‘Gift of Life’ ceremony after ‘Rotary Club of Bombay Airport’, led by Nitin Mehta, facilitated congenital coronary heart surgical procedures of round 150 kids on the ‘Shri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital’.
“In my first Test match that I was playing, I was batting on 12 and a drive outside the off-stump and the catch went to the greatest cricketer…Garfield Sobers, it went straight to him and it poked out of his hands, I was on only 12, so I got a gift of cricketing life there,” the 71-year-old stated right here.
“That allowed me to score a half-century and keep my place in the team for the next Test,” he recalled.
The legendary batsman made his Test debut on March 6, 1971 towards the West Indies, a sequence which India gained. He then went on to grow to be the primary batsman to attain 10,000 Test runs.
“In the following Test additionally, after I was batting on 6, I slashed on the ball outdoors the off-stump, once more it went to Sir Garfield Sobers, this time in fact the ball went quite a bit faster, he in all probability didn’t see it within the background.
“The ball generally will get misplaced within the background and it hit him within the chest and by the point he would recuperate, the ball once more dropped to the bottom and I acquired my first Test century.
“It helped me to keep my career going for 16-17 years for the Indian team. But for those two lives, I wouldn’t be here,” he stated and in addition defined how cricket is a staff sport,” recalled the ‘Little Master’, who has amassed 10,122 runs from 125 Tests.