Mukul Kesavan
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Published 14.03.21, 12:39 AM
My classmates and I were thirteen when Gavaskar saved us from second-rateness fifty years ago. He scored three half-centuries, three centuries and a double century in four Tests in his debut series. He rounded off his tour with a hundred and a double hundred in the same Test. 774 runs for the series... who is to say he wouldn’t have scored a 1000 if he had played all five?
We used to play book cricket during lunch breaks in school and make runs on that scale. Gavaskar scored those runs in real matches, on tour, against the West Indies, in a winning cause. 774 is the highest series total notched up by a debutant in all of Test cricket’s history. Sometimes, figures do tell the whole story.