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The Surfer

Sunil Gavaskar: Cricket’s original brand icon

Firstpost.com on Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam's book, The Business of Cricket: The Story of Sports Marketing in India , which talks about how, a few decades ago, Sunil Gavaskar was a unique phenomenon in India - a

Nikita Bastian
Nikita Bastian
25-Feb-2013
Firstpost.com on Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam's book, The Business of Cricket: The Story of Sports Marketing in India, which talks about how, a few decades ago, Sunil Gavaskar was a unique phenomenon in India - a batsman-cum-entrepreneur.
There was one more reason Gavaskar captured the nation’s imagination. The 1970s was the era of the angry young man, with widespread frustration over the high unemployment rate, among other things. What the original angry young man, Amitabh Bachchan, was to Hindi cinema, Gavaskar was to cricket. He was the lone anti-establishment figure, irreverent and uncompromising, fighting to the last. His image was well-suited to the national mood of the times, when the country was looking to these anti-hero figures for some sort of respite.

Nikita Bastian is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo