Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Manohar Gavaskar (born July 10, 1949 in Mumbai, Maharashtra), nicknamed Sunny, was a cricket player during the 1970s and 1980s for Bombay and India. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in the Indian Test history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most runs and most 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. He 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. His captaincy of the Indian team, however, was less successful. The team at one stage went 31 Test matches without a victory. There were incidents like crowd displeasure at Eden Gardens in Calcutta leading to multiple matches being disrupted, in response to the poor performance of the Indian team. Turbulent performances of the team lead to multiple exchanges of captaincy between Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, with one of Gavaskar's sackings coming just six months before Kapil led India to victory at the 1983 Cricket World Cup.

Gavaskar has also been awarded the Padma Bhushan. In December 1994 he was appointed the Sheriff of Mumbai, an honorary for a year. After retirement, he has been a popular, sometimes controversial commentator, both on TV and in print. He has written four books on cricket – Sunny days (autobiography), Idols, Runs n' Ruins and One day wonders. He also served as an advisor to the Indian cricket team during the home series against Australia in 2004 and currently serves as the Chairman of the ICC cricket committee.
His son Rohan is also a cricketer who plays at the national level in the Ranji Trophy. He has played some One Day Internationals for India, but could not cement his spot in the team.
The Border-Gavaskar Trophy has been instituted in his (co-)honour.