Against whom did Sunil Gavaskar score his 30th Test ton?
(22 October 2002)

The India-West Indies series in 1983 was a memorable one for Sunil Gavaskar. Despite having the mortification of seeing his bat knocked out of his hands by Malcolm Marshall and despite being dismissed for a duck on a couple of occasions, Gavaskar recovered to claim more than one world record. The first to fall was Geoffery Boycott's record aggregate, by going past which Gavaskar became the highest run-getter in the annals of Test cricket. A more memorable moment came when he finally broke the Don's long-standing record of 29 centuries.

The latter event occurred in the final Test of the six-Test series, played at Chennai from 24-29 December. After the first day's play had been washed out, the West Indies, who had already claimed the series 3-0, made 313 before being dismissed on the third day.

The Indian reply got off to a disastrous start, Malcolm Marshall removing Anshuman Gaekwad and Dilip Vengsarkar off successive balls. Gavaskar, who came in at number four, faced the hat-trick ball. The Little Master negotiated it successfully, but with the first run not being scored till the 23rd ball of the innings was bowled, the pressure on him was enormous.

Once the shackles were broken, however, the runs began to flow from Gavaskar's rapacious blade. Despite losing Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ashok Malhotra and Shivlal Yadav, he brought up his landmark hundred with a cheeky single in the company of Ravi Shastri. If the West Indies thought that the Little Master would be satisfied with this achievement, they were sorely mistaken. Displaying the unquenchable thirst that had made him the premier run-getter in Tests, Gavaskar went on to score a double-hundred, ending up with an unbeaten 236 - the highest score by an Indian at that point of time - before Kapil Dev finally declared the innings closed.

The match went on to end in a draw, but Gavaskar had ensured that his last appearance against the West Indies was a most memorable occasion. He had scored an unprecedented 13 centuries, including three double-centuries, in the 27 Test appearances that he made against the men from the Caribbean. It was indeed a fitting denouement to a mastery that began when Gavaskar, as a 21-year- old, scored over 700 runs in his debut Test series.