Q: What takes a good/great cricketer to become legend?
A: It is not about just playing cricket, it’s about the commitment and dedication that makes legends. He talked about the three DDDs which are the differentiators. Dedication towards the game, sacrifices you make to achieve goals for example you might have cramps and team needs you on the field, you have choice of either retiring fighting out in middle and convert doubles to triples. Discipline is another key factor, discipline not in the way that we should go t bed at 11 if we have match next day, but discipline in learning, improving the game. If coach suggests something, try to improve on it. Determination to succeed, to fight, to accept challenges.
Q: BCCI has any vision or not?
SG: Yeah definitely they have vision, but very short vision, might be till 2008 or shorter. Then he discussed about what is the main problem, and he feels selection the issue. He feels selectors should look at the potential in the player; they should be able to figure out how committed player will be. Selectors should not be statisticians. A player might not hit the century, but someone else’s 65 or 3 wickets can convince selectors.
He feels for improvement in Indian cricket, we should have better selectors. Better selectors at junior level, under-19 and India-A have an important role to play than national selectors as they groom the players.
Q: will India reach in semi-finals in 2011 WC or not?
SG: yeah, most probably, as we will have good mix of young and experience, and Indian conditions suit us.
He was pretty convinced for the win this time too, because of numerology than confidence. Like Kapil Dev’s last name’s last character matches with Rahul Dravid’s, both captains share the same sun sign, both took over captaincy from SG (Sunil Gavaskar and Sourav Ganguly). But at last he said, “Thank You Bangladesh”
Q: If you feel some current cricketer has a scope of improvement and you can help with it, will you go and help?
SG: If I feel that my comments/suggestions would be taken in positive way and will help in improvement I will definitely go and help. We will have a small chat/tip/suggestion and will ask to try it. He can try it out on nets first and then take it to ODIs. If he is comfortable with those changes he can take it to Test matches too.
Q: Why we had only one triple century? (Manish)
SG: We don’t have many triple centuries in world cricket too. Anyways the number of centuries is reducing now, it’s because the playing style has changed. Now players do not leave balls moving away from them. That helps in faster scoring but is risky too.
Q: Is 20-twenty cricket ruining test/one day cricket? (Veetrag)
SG: No, actually it helps in improvement. The same things were said when One day cricket came into picture, people used to say that no one with watch test matches. But nothing like this happened, the playing style of crickets changed and it helped Tests. Previously test matches were mostly draws now you don’t see that many draws and most of the draws are result of bad weather. Scoring rates have changed; batsmen have started taking more risks.
Same will happen to one days too, now one days are too predictable. We know batsmen will come and hit for first 20 overs and then last 10 overs, I hope with 20-twenty we will see a change in style of playing and that would reflect someday in ODIs too.
( here, I wanted to ask another question, don’t you think cricket is becoming more and more of a batsmen game than bowlers, with scores like 434, 402 and all there is nothing much a bowler could do when complete power game is on)
Q: Why don’t we have crickets as administrators/coaches in BCCI?
SG: It’s very hard for crickets to go around and win elections. BCCI has a lot of politics and to gain every post there in an election. If we take example of Mumbai where all clubs affiliate vote to select the representative. But clubs prefer to select their ‘own’ people rather than test crickets as they feel there people would be easily accessible when needed.
Q: Tendulkar should be there in team or not, just answer in Yes or No?
SG: Yes. (The expected answer was no)
Q: Tendulkar should coach after retirement or not?
SG: He should coach, if he feels like coaching or umpiring. But he should take a break of few years before doing that. Always there should be ‘cooling off’ period otherwise at later stage it might create controversy.
Q: Is it justified to have non cricketers in BCCI?
SG: Actually it’s very hard for crickets to get into administrative posts in BCCI. As it is completely elections based. As Sharad Pawar has once said “there is more politics in BCCI than in Politics”.
Q: Cricket, a game played by 11 players attracts so much attention is this country. Do you think the same dedication required to play this game to meet the expectations of the nation, can be delivered by a workforce of 75000 odd people?
(I don’t remember the answer now)
Q: Economy is growing at 7-8% why cricket is not growing at same rate?
(I don’t remember the answer now)
Gavaskar also asked us one question: What’s the score in today’s match? Who all are playing?
PS: Thanks Sumitha and Mks for contributing the questions.
Disclaimer: These questions were asked to Sunil Gavaskar at Infosys, Bangalore on 25th may 2007. Answers presented above are recreated by me with my limited retention power.
Tags: cricket
