by Veena Gabriel
How can I claim to be angelic? This is the reply Sunil Gavaskar the yesteryear’s cricket icon has given in reply to Ricky Ponting.
Ponting as everyone knows is so desperate to sell his book after the debacle in India that he is leaking only the worst sides of the world cricket teams, barring Australia ,of course.
Now the incident which he refers to happened in MCG in 1981 where Gavaskar was abused. As per the video,Gavasker first left the crease going towards the dressing room and than he turned back and tried to take Chetan Chauhan off. It was for this act Ponting has commented that Indian Legend was not an angel himself in his playing days.
The best part being that when this incident took place Ponting was just seven years old and at that age he must only be involved in games which normal young boys play, so the question arises: how can he give his comments just on the basis of a video?
Being Ponting he conveniently forgot to mention the fall-out of the infamous “Walk-Out”. Next day Gavaskar realizing his mistake, regretted the whole incident in the press. This admittance of one’s mistake seems to be an aberration in Ponting’s view so why make Gavaskar a good guy?
It seems that Australians have a long way to go before accepting their drubbing by a “Third World Country” and Ponting is trying to cover up his failure by commenting on incidents which happened long back and that too presenting a not so pretty picture of Indian cricketers.
It is not helping in building up the Australians’ good image, rather opposite is happening.
