Padding up for the future

G S Vivek, of the Indian Express, traces the story of an Indian-origin entrepreneur who has made a name by selling the best cricket pads in business today.

Jagodia says, it was Gavaskar really, and then Sachin who helped his brand of pads become what it is now. And he still doesn’t pay any endorsements. “It was really Sunil. He started wearing it when it was totally revolutionary — with all that controversy of the ball bouncing off too much after it hit the pad, he actually established the product as such. No doubt that Sachin, who is such a huge star, took the product to the next level and made it a generic name in pads category,” he says gleefully.

The story is that when Sachin Tendulkar came along, Gavaskar was his hero and he gave Tendulkar a pair of his old pads and that’s how he started. “Sachin was very superstitious, and because those old-fashioned pads had leather straps, we had to make pads with leather straps, because he won’t wear sticker pads, like modern cricketers. Laxman also wanted leather straps, so it’s becoming kind of a nightmare for us.