Sunil Gavaskar: 'The prize that I put on my wicket was invariably a 100'

The maestro said that he always aimed at bat sessions in Test matches, beginning from the start of play till stumps. “The prize that I put on my wicket was invariably a 100. I always wanted a century; that's the minimum I wanted to get… Obviously that was impossible, even Sir Don Bradman couldn't do it in every inning.

So, my whole idea was to bat sessions; first session to lunch, then to tea and then to the close of play,” Gavaskar said at an event organised by ABP Group. “I didn't look at the scoreboard when I was batting, because every batsman has his own way of setting targets. Small targets are what the coaches tell you first, getting to 10, 20 and 30, which is a good way,” the former India captain said.

“The way I was looking at is that if my target was to get to 30, if I got to anywhere around 24-25, I would be very anxious then to try and get to 30. I would then play at a ball outside off stump or something, nick it and be out for say 26, trying to hit the boundary that would have got me to 30,” he said. Sharing an interesting anecdote, Gavaskar said he did not even realise when he had equalled Sir Don Bradman's 29th Test century.

“I didn't have any idea till (Dilip) Vengsarkar came and told me about the achievement,” the batting wizard said. Gavaskar equalled Bradman's record of 29 Test centuries in 1983 against West Indies in New Delhi.