In modern-day cricket, sledging has become a part and parcel of the sport. But there was a time when it was a rare occurrence in the field. Especially in the era of players like Sunil Gavaskar and the West Indian dominance of the sport, there was rarely a nasty comment made at opponents even in the heat of battle, no matter what was at stake.
In fact, so rare was sledging in Gavaskar’s playing days that he recollected being confused when a Pakistani cricketer tried to sledge him in a game because the comment was being made in chaste Punjabi. While Gavaskar did not name the player, or mention which game the incident happened, he revealed, “This guy was standing in front at the end of every other delivery and he was, you know, just calling me with a word that started like pan. I didn’t know what was happening. I knew he was abusing me because after pan, the second half of the word was something I recognised. That was the first time we had seen this happening. We didn’t have sledging or, you know, this abusing for most of the time that we played. When I went back to the change room… the guys are saying, what is he doing? What is he saying?
“I got back in the change room for the interval and I said, obviously he’s saying something to me. But what has my pants got to do with it? You know, he’s saying pant, pant, something like that. That was then the Punjabi players in the team collapsed because they knew what was being said,” Gavaskar recollected once on the 22 Yarns Podcast.
Gavaskar added on the episode that the West Indians, even at the peak of their powers considered sledging an opponent reprehensible. He pointed out that his idol Rohan Kanhai — who he named his son Rohan Gavaskar after — was in fact such a gentleman that every time Gavaskar played a poor shot he would walk past him and mutter a stern line (like “Don’t you want to score a century?”) reminding him to concentrate.
