Playing against India under Imran Khan's leadership wasn't as comfortable an experience for Ramiz Raja, whose skipper would get angry at him whenever he saw his opener err and at the same time experienced Sunil Gavaskar show off his genius at the top of the order for the opposition.
Imran would tell Ramiz & co to have a good look at how Gavaskar went about his business and try and absorb what made him such a great batsman.
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"Instead of getting angry at Sunil Gavaskar, he would look at me because I was an opener as well and he would say, look how he is playing, and then it would be followed by a couple of swear words," Ramiz told Sportskeeda in a Facebook Live interview.
"So I tell this story to Sunil and even now I say, you scored runs but I got the flak, not you...from Imran because he was in awe of Sunil as well," he added.
Gavaskar's legendary stay at the highest level saw him averaging 51.12 for 10,122 runs, including 34 hundreds and 45 half-centuries.
He reserved some of his best efforts for Pakistan. None more so than his last Test innings, an outstanding knock of 96 in the run-chase in Bangalore in 1987 on a surface where only one other batsman from either side went past fifty.
In his 24 Tests against Pakistan, Gavaskar scored 2,089 runs at an average of 56.45.
"When I first came across Sunil Gavaskar, he was like a God in the early ‘80s. And if Imran told you that he is the best batsman or somebody was the best batsman in the world, you looked at him, and I was in awe of what I saw, you know, even though Sunil Gavaskar was on his way out. I am talking about 86-87 series," said Ramiz.
"So I would stand at short leg and Imran Khan would come and try extremely hard to dislodge him (Sunil Gavaskar) during that India tour of ours and Sunil Gavaskar will be so calm in leaving the ball outside the off-stump and he would wait for the opportunities."
"Whenever Imran bowled those banana in-swing deliveries on his pads, Sunil worked it away through the short leg, through where I was and the ball would run and hit the fence," he added.
