Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Today is Sunil Gavaskar's 70th birthday

A cricketer regarded as India's greatest at the time of his retirement, but whose star has dimmed since

The man retired in 1987, and people under the age of 45 have little-to-no living memory of seeing him play

While he was perhaps overrated at one point, today he is underrated

His average of 51 as an opener looks more impressive now than ever given that so many great openers in our times have fallen short of that despite crossing it for brief periods in their careers

Matthew Hayden, Alastair Cook, Virendra Sehwag, Graeme Smith, Saeed Anwar, Justin Langer, Mark Taylor - all of them fell short of 51

Despite batting in an era of somewhat better wickets, helmets, and less consistent new ball attacks

In Gavaskar's own time, his average of 51 was unparalleled among openers

Richards and Greg Chappell had similar averages but batting at No 3 or 4.

A great opener like Greenidge, a contemporary of Gavaskar, averaged just 44.7. And he didn't have to face the West Indies attack

Gavaskar's record against West Indies with 13 hundreds is celebrated. But perhaps a little too much

It is true that much of his runs against Windies preceded their rise to the top, and during the Packer period

So by lionizing Gavaskar for his Windies record, we tend to under-estimate his greater achievements against stronger teams

E.g. His century on a seamer at Old Trafford in 1974
His double century chasing at the Oval in 1979
His three centuries against Jeff Thomson in 1977
Or his great 90 odd against Pakistan on a Bangalore turner in 1987

The other pet-peeve against Gavaskar is of course his allegedly slow batting, and his infamous ODI innings on occasion - e.g. his 36 not out in the 1975 World Cup in 60 overs

But this is a mischaracterization of Gavaskar. Throughout the 1980s he was a fine ODI player, in an era when ODIs weren't taken too seriously

The 1975 effort was a bit of an outlier in the context of his own record

Many of his test innings were outright aggressive. E.g. his 90 off 120 balls at Ahmedabad in 1983 against Holding, Marshall and Wayne Daniel

Several others were masterpieces of controlled aggression

E.g. his 221 at the Oval or his 236 at Chennai against West Indies

So it is unfair to label Gavaskar as a largely defensive batsmen - an appellation that may be appropriate for say a Bill Lawry or a Geoffrey Boycott.

But not Gavaskar

Indian cricket can be viewed in terms of pre-Gavaskar and post-Gavaskar epochs

His advent in Cricket in 1971 marked Indian cricket's maturation - his first two series against WI and England were famous series wins for India on away soil

Sure, we had great batsmen before Gavaskar - great figures like Vijay Merchant or Vijay Hazare in the 1940s

But 1950s on, Indian batting declined.

After Hazare's retirement, we did not produce another great batsmen till the rise of Gavaskar and Vishwanath at the dawn of the 70s

So Gavaskar indeed is a figure of immense importance. With a very strong claim to be the greatest of all Indian cricketers

As strong a claim as that of Sachin Tendulkar or Kapil Dev