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आयडॉल्स: Idols
भारतात जे अनेक चांगले क्रिकेटपटू तयार झाले त्यातला सुनील गावसकर हा एक श्रेष्ठ. 'सनी डेज्' हे त्याचं क्रिकेटवर लिहिलेलं अतिशय सुंदर व वाचनीय पुस्तक. त्या पुस्तकाचा खप फार प्रचंड झाला. फारच थोडे खेळाडू असे आहेत की, जे लिहू शकतात. गावसकर हा त्यापैकीच एक. तो स्वतः लिहितो आणि त्याचं लिखाण मोठं बहारदार असतं. 'आयडॉल्स' या पुस्तकात सुनील गावसकरनं क्रिकेट विश्वातल्या एकतीस उत्कृष्ट समकालीन खेळाडूंचं आपल्या चित्रमयी भाषेत शब्दचित्र रेखाटलंय. त्यांच्या कलेचं कौतुक केलंय. हे सगळे एकतीस खेळाडू तुमचे आमचे, सर्वांचे आवडते 'हिरोज्' आहेत. गावसकरही त्यांना मानतो. त्यांचं तंत्र, शैली आणि पद्धत गावसकरच्या मनात भरली आहे. त्यांच्या खेळातली कलाही गावसकरला भुरळ पाडते.
- GenresSportsNonfiction
356 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1983
10 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Sunil Gavaskar
17 books11 followersSunil Manohar "Sunny" Gavaskar is a former cricketer who played during the 1970s and 1980s for Bombay and India. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in cricket history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most Test runs and most Test centuries scored by any batsman. He held the record of 34 Test centuries for almost two decades before it was broken by Sachin Tendulkar in December 2005.
Gavaskar was widely admired for his technique against fast bowling, with a particularly high average of 65.45 against the West Indies, who possessed a four-pronged fast bowling attack regarded as the most vicious in Test history.
Gavaskar was widely admired for his technique against fast bowling, with a particularly high average of 65.45 against the West Indies, who possessed a four-pronged fast bowling attack regarded as the most vicious in Test history.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 2, 2012
Slightly disappointing. Rather than focusing on the personality which only someone inside the circle could, Sunny summarises the idols' cricket careers. So instead of insightful anecdotes and background about what drives them to be the champions they are and why they are Sunny's 'idols', this reads more like a consolidated cricinfo profile page.
March 29, 2024
For a 90s kid like me who grew up hearing yesteryear cricketing tales from elders - this book was a revelation. Writing by Sunny paji is competent, though writing structure could have been better. A good read though. 5 stars for the tale, not for the telling.
September 9, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # Cricket
When I look back at 1996, it is not only the year of board exams and the dread of last-minute cramming that floods my memory. It is also the year of a book, gifted with quiet affection by my father on my birthday. A book that arrived like a counterpoint to all the stress, like a reminder that life was larger than marks and report cards.
That book was Idols by Sunil Gavaskar, in its Bengali translation. I can still picture its cover, slightly austere, and remember the joy of holding something that carried both cricket and literature together, something that was at once my father’s offering and my own discovery.
To read Gavaskar in Bengali was in itself an act of intimacy. Cricket writing had largely lived in English for me until then, the language of newspapers, of ESPN commentary that was just finding its way into our living rooms, of glossy magazine features. But this book arrived in the language of home, the language my father spoke with me, the language of childhood lullabies and neighbourhood gossip. Reading cricket in Bengali was like breaking a secret code, like cricket had decided to lean closer and whisper to me in my own tongue. It felt immediate, accessible, and rooted, and for that, I remain grateful to whoever thought of translating Gavaskar’s prose into Bangla.
What struck me most was the tenderness with which Gavaskar sketched the lives of cricketers who had shaped his imagination. This was not a book of hard statistics, nor a dry compilation of records. It was not about averages, strike rates, or the new emerging lexicon of match analysis that television was popularising in the mid-90s. Instead, Idols was about people, about character, about quirks, failings, determination, and the small, almost invisible details that turn a sportsman into an icon. Gavaskar was not trying to be a historian; he was trying to be a storyteller, and that made all the difference.
There was something so disarming about how the great Gavaskar, India’s most revered opener, wrote with humility about those he admired. It was as if his achievements with the bat did not give him a license to sermonise, but rather gave him a vantage point from which to observe and appreciate. I was struck by how his reverence for his idols did not translate into hagiography. He saw them as human beings first. That distinction was critical for me at the age of sixteen, because my world was filled with exam toppers and legends from textbooks, people presented as flawless. To read Gavaskar on the frailty, courage, and struggles of great cricketers was to realise that idols need not be gods. They could be human and yet inspiring.
As I leafed through the pages, I often felt like I was hearing echoes of my father’s own voice. He would tell me stories about old matches, about how Pataudi batted with one eye, how Chandrasekhar bowled with a damaged arm, how Kapil Dev never missed a chance to laugh even when the team was down. And here was Gavaskar doing the same in print, formalising the oral traditions of cricket storytelling that fathers passed on to sons. It was not so much that I was learning about the players, but that I was being ushered into a larger fraternity of remembrance and admiration. Cricket was never only about the present match, the live telecast. It was also about memory, about who came before, and how their shadows shaped those who came after.
1996 was also a poignant year for cricket itself. Tendulkar was beginning to emerge as the undisputed genius of the Indian batting order, carrying the dreams of a billion. The World Cup in the subcontinent had just happened, a carnival of noise and heartbreak, with the semi-final at Eden Gardens ending in tears. In that landscape of immediacy, of watching and consuming cricket as spectacle, Gavaskar’s Idols worked like a grounding mechanism. It reminded me that this game was not only about Sachin’s straight drive or Jayasuriya’s blitzkrieg, but also about the long arc of individuals who had laboured, faltered, triumphed, and inspired. It pulled me out of the fever of the present and placed me into a continuum.
What makes Idols endure in my memory is its simplicity. Gavaskar did not dress his prose in unnecessary flourish. He wrote in a manner that was conversational, almost as if he were chatting with you over tea. That quality survived even in Bengali translation. In fact, I suspect the translation amplified it, because Bengali carries with it a rhythm of intimacy, of adda, of long winding sentences that bend like cricket deliveries around the batsman’s guard. Reading about Gavaskar’s heroes in Bangla made them feel like relatives, neighbours, or friends of friends, not distant figures etched in the unreachable skies of cricketing legend.
When I revisit that book in my memory now, I realise it was more than just a collection of profiles. It was also a statement about what it means to look up to someone. In a decade where celebrity culture was starting to balloon, Gavaskar offered a quieter model of hero-worship, one grounded in respect rather than blind awe. He showed me that to have an idol is not to imitate them slavishly, but to learn from their struggles and carry forward their spirit in one’s own modest way. It was a lesson that helped me not just as a reader or a cricket lover, but also as a student sitting with textbooks, preparing for exams that felt monumental at the time.
Over the years, I have read far more sophisticated cricket books. Ramachandra Guha’s A Corner of a Foreign Field gave me a history drenched in politics and society. Boria Majumdar opened my eyes to the intersections of sport and nationalism. Autobiographies of players like Tendulkar and Ganguly gave me insider accounts of dressing rooms and boardroom politics. Yet, whenever I think of the first cricket book that belonged wholly to me, it is Idols. Its modest size, its intimate tone, and its Bengali voice continue to glow like a lantern from my teenage years.
I sometimes wonder if younger readers today, with cricket YouTube channels and Instagram reels, would still find such a book engaging. Perhaps the pace of attention has changed, and perhaps statistical apps and fantasy leagues now dominate the conversation. But if one is willing to slow down and listen, Idols still has something timeless to say. It insists on the human dimension of sport, the inner lives of players, the notion that greatness is not built overnight but through patient perseverance. And it insists that cricket writing, when done with honesty, can be as moving as any novel or memoir.
For me, Idols is inseparable from the image of my father handing it to me. That gesture is the core of the book’s meaning. Cricket has always been, in India, not just a sport but also a relationship across generations. Fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, passing down stories, memories, books, and even old scorecards. Gavaskar, by writing Idols, joined that tradition. And my father, by gifting it to me, ensured I became a participant in it. Long after the pressure of exams faded, that act of love and that book have remained.
Today, if someone asks me to list the great cricket books of my life, I will mention the heavyweights, the scholarly works, the dazzling narratives. But in the middle of that list will stand Idols, quiet and firm, reminding me that to read cricket is not only to accumulate knowledge but also to nurture affection. It is the book that taught me how to love cricketers as people, not just as machines of runs and wickets. And it is the book that bound me, however briefly, in a secret trinity with Gavaskar and my father. For that, I will remain indebted to it, forever.
When I look back at 1996, it is not only the year of board exams and the dread of last-minute cramming that floods my memory. It is also the year of a book, gifted with quiet affection by my father on my birthday. A book that arrived like a counterpoint to all the stress, like a reminder that life was larger than marks and report cards.
That book was Idols by Sunil Gavaskar, in its Bengali translation. I can still picture its cover, slightly austere, and remember the joy of holding something that carried both cricket and literature together, something that was at once my father’s offering and my own discovery.
To read Gavaskar in Bengali was in itself an act of intimacy. Cricket writing had largely lived in English for me until then, the language of newspapers, of ESPN commentary that was just finding its way into our living rooms, of glossy magazine features. But this book arrived in the language of home, the language my father spoke with me, the language of childhood lullabies and neighbourhood gossip. Reading cricket in Bengali was like breaking a secret code, like cricket had decided to lean closer and whisper to me in my own tongue. It felt immediate, accessible, and rooted, and for that, I remain grateful to whoever thought of translating Gavaskar’s prose into Bangla.
What struck me most was the tenderness with which Gavaskar sketched the lives of cricketers who had shaped his imagination. This was not a book of hard statistics, nor a dry compilation of records. It was not about averages, strike rates, or the new emerging lexicon of match analysis that television was popularising in the mid-90s. Instead, Idols was about people, about character, about quirks, failings, determination, and the small, almost invisible details that turn a sportsman into an icon. Gavaskar was not trying to be a historian; he was trying to be a storyteller, and that made all the difference.
There was something so disarming about how the great Gavaskar, India’s most revered opener, wrote with humility about those he admired. It was as if his achievements with the bat did not give him a license to sermonise, but rather gave him a vantage point from which to observe and appreciate. I was struck by how his reverence for his idols did not translate into hagiography. He saw them as human beings first. That distinction was critical for me at the age of sixteen, because my world was filled with exam toppers and legends from textbooks, people presented as flawless. To read Gavaskar on the frailty, courage, and struggles of great cricketers was to realise that idols need not be gods. They could be human and yet inspiring.
As I leafed through the pages, I often felt like I was hearing echoes of my father’s own voice. He would tell me stories about old matches, about how Pataudi batted with one eye, how Chandrasekhar bowled with a damaged arm, how Kapil Dev never missed a chance to laugh even when the team was down. And here was Gavaskar doing the same in print, formalising the oral traditions of cricket storytelling that fathers passed on to sons. It was not so much that I was learning about the players, but that I was being ushered into a larger fraternity of remembrance and admiration. Cricket was never only about the present match, the live telecast. It was also about memory, about who came before, and how their shadows shaped those who came after.
1996 was also a poignant year for cricket itself. Tendulkar was beginning to emerge as the undisputed genius of the Indian batting order, carrying the dreams of a billion. The World Cup in the subcontinent had just happened, a carnival of noise and heartbreak, with the semi-final at Eden Gardens ending in tears. In that landscape of immediacy, of watching and consuming cricket as spectacle, Gavaskar’s Idols worked like a grounding mechanism. It reminded me that this game was not only about Sachin’s straight drive or Jayasuriya’s blitzkrieg, but also about the long arc of individuals who had laboured, faltered, triumphed, and inspired. It pulled me out of the fever of the present and placed me into a continuum.
What makes Idols endure in my memory is its simplicity. Gavaskar did not dress his prose in unnecessary flourish. He wrote in a manner that was conversational, almost as if he were chatting with you over tea. That quality survived even in Bengali translation. In fact, I suspect the translation amplified it, because Bengali carries with it a rhythm of intimacy, of adda, of long winding sentences that bend like cricket deliveries around the batsman’s guard. Reading about Gavaskar’s heroes in Bangla made them feel like relatives, neighbours, or friends of friends, not distant figures etched in the unreachable skies of cricketing legend.
When I revisit that book in my memory now, I realise it was more than just a collection of profiles. It was also a statement about what it means to look up to someone. In a decade where celebrity culture was starting to balloon, Gavaskar offered a quieter model of hero-worship, one grounded in respect rather than blind awe. He showed me that to have an idol is not to imitate them slavishly, but to learn from their struggles and carry forward their spirit in one’s own modest way. It was a lesson that helped me not just as a reader or a cricket lover, but also as a student sitting with textbooks, preparing for exams that felt monumental at the time.
Over the years, I have read far more sophisticated cricket books. Ramachandra Guha’s A Corner of a Foreign Field gave me a history drenched in politics and society. Boria Majumdar opened my eyes to the intersections of sport and nationalism. Autobiographies of players like Tendulkar and Ganguly gave me insider accounts of dressing rooms and boardroom politics. Yet, whenever I think of the first cricket book that belonged wholly to me, it is Idols. Its modest size, its intimate tone, and its Bengali voice continue to glow like a lantern from my teenage years.
I sometimes wonder if younger readers today, with cricket YouTube channels and Instagram reels, would still find such a book engaging. Perhaps the pace of attention has changed, and perhaps statistical apps and fantasy leagues now dominate the conversation. But if one is willing to slow down and listen, Idols still has something timeless to say. It insists on the human dimension of sport, the inner lives of players, the notion that greatness is not built overnight but through patient perseverance. And it insists that cricket writing, when done with honesty, can be as moving as any novel or memoir.
For me, Idols is inseparable from the image of my father handing it to me. That gesture is the core of the book’s meaning. Cricket has always been, in India, not just a sport but also a relationship across generations. Fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, passing down stories, memories, books, and even old scorecards. Gavaskar, by writing Idols, joined that tradition. And my father, by gifting it to me, ensured I became a participant in it. Long after the pressure of exams faded, that act of love and that book have remained.
Today, if someone asks me to list the great cricket books of my life, I will mention the heavyweights, the scholarly works, the dazzling narratives. But in the middle of that list will stand Idols, quiet and firm, reminding me that to read cricket is not only to accumulate knowledge but also to nurture affection. It is the book that taught me how to love cricketers as people, not just as machines of runs and wickets. And it is the book that bound me, however briefly, in a secret trinity with Gavaskar and my father. For that, I will remain indebted to it, forever.
December 2, 2018
Idols : Sunil Gavaskar is about 31 cricketers of the Cricketing Nations who have impressed Gavaskar as Idols. The Book is interesting because it shows the negative aspects of various teams- breaking the concentration of players by disturbing them so that they win by hook or crook. Australia- sledging, Pakistan- Abusing, West Indies- bowling pace which can hit the body,(body line tactics) Australia-not friendly players even after the match is over, England- Press always covering up the English team though they may commit mistakes, Australian Third Umpire giving the benefit of doubt to home team only. A game is played to enjoy and plan so that a team and cover all odds and win. Second, all visiting teams plays so many matches that they are tired and energy worn out for the tests. Those players who have played English Country Cricket are more comfortable about the changes in weather so that they can adopt their body accordingly. Third, weather is bad and visiting teams do not get time for net practice one day before the match. The book has sold many editions because it opens up negative inside aspects of teams during the course of the match. He has written highly about all Indian players. It is a good read for all sports lovers.
Read
August 22, 2014Sunil Gavaskar wrote ‘Idols’ on his most favourite cricketers. The book has profiled 30 odd cricketers of his time. The book profiles cricketers such as Rohan Kanhai (Gavaskar named his son as Rohan as a tribute to Kanhai), Sobers, Hadlee, Marsh, Kapil Dev, “Jimmy” Amarnath, “Zed” Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Imran Khan, Viv Richards, Bishen Singh Bedi, Prasanna, B. S. Chandra Sekhar, Venkataraghavan, etc. He also profiles some of the unlucky cricketers like Rajinder Goel and P. Shivalkar who could not make it to the national team.
Gavaskar includes interesting details about the profiled cricketers’ on and off the field lives too. Being in the game for such a long time, he is definitely bound to know a lot about the cricketers of his era. His language is also beautiful. I don’t think it is easy to find this book in bookstores anymore unless you find a copy or two in Amazon.
Gavaskar includes interesting details about the profiled cricketers’ on and off the field lives too. Being in the game for such a long time, he is definitely bound to know a lot about the cricketers of his era. His language is also beautiful. I don’t think it is easy to find this book in bookstores anymore unless you find a copy or two in Amazon.
December 24, 2025
I had purchased this book in 1985 and I am reading it again at 2025. It is a 1983 edition.
Sunil Gavaskar is a legend in the cricket World.
He has got a sharp cricketing brain and has been a successful model, actor, sports writer and a commentator and hence a complete all rounder.
in this book he speaks about 31 people whom he considers idols. a lot of the description is technical.
However, the icing on the cake are the anecdotes about these cricketers.
Just imagine a cricketer greeted at the airport by Garry Sobers and a dignified old man and handing over his bag to the old man while going to the toilet and then coming back asking him for his name and the reply comes. my name is Don Bradman !
There is also an incident of a beer pub fight between Ian Chappel and Ian Botham .
of course I will not narrate the rest of the incidents.
The only downside is that. yes, not written much about 1983 World Cup winners.
But then even these incidents are the holy grail for cricket lovers.
Sunil Gavaskar is a legend in the cricket World.
He has got a sharp cricketing brain and has been a successful model, actor, sports writer and a commentator and hence a complete all rounder.
in this book he speaks about 31 people whom he considers idols. a lot of the description is technical.
However, the icing on the cake are the anecdotes about these cricketers.
Just imagine a cricketer greeted at the airport by Garry Sobers and a dignified old man and handing over his bag to the old man while going to the toilet and then coming back asking him for his name and the reply comes. my name is Don Bradman !
There is also an incident of a beer pub fight between Ian Chappel and Ian Botham .
of course I will not narrate the rest of the incidents.
The only downside is that. yes, not written much about 1983 World Cup winners.
But then even these incidents are the holy grail for cricket lovers.
October 20, 2013
This is a candid and fascinating account of SMG's favorite cricketers. SMG brings out several small but important qualities in a number of cricketers, some known and some relatively unknown.
Having read most of his books and followed most of his career as a cricketer and later as a commentator, I found this to be his most forthcoming book. It is amazing how he spent 6 of his best years as a batsman (1977-1983) writing this one after Sunny Days. May be the success he had as a batsman in this time period reflects in the confident assessment of his idols.
Having read most of his books and followed most of his career as a cricketer and later as a commentator, I found this to be his most forthcoming book. It is amazing how he spent 6 of his best years as a batsman (1977-1983) writing this one after Sunny Days. May be the success he had as a batsman in this time period reflects in the confident assessment of his idols.
April 17, 2016
This it is the first non-fiction that I read and that I bought with my own money. If you love cricket and want to know about the stalwarts that belong to a different era, this is one good book for that.
August 9, 2008
not the most well written book, but tales about cricket and the greatest in the game is always worth a read...when you love the game.
October 2, 2011
Read long long a go. At that time, my impression was: He writes as good as he bats. One of the 1st Indian players who could call white bluff.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews