Sunil Gavaskar reveals the bowler that troubled him the most

In a candid chat with a print media publication, the great Sunil Gavaskar admitted that the most difficult bowler he'd ever faced was Australian spinner, Bruce Yardley. Gavaskar was renowned for facing up to some of the most ferocious bowlers of his time. One would have expected that he would name one of the fearsome West Indies pacemen or an Australian like Dennis Lillee or an Imran Khan or a myriad of other deadly fast bowlers of his time as his tormentor.

He admitted that Yardley was the bowler who troubled him the most. Given the list of tear-away fast bowlers that tormented batsmen in those days, nobody would have guessed that a relatively ordinary bowler like Yardley would even remotely trouble the batsman who was the first to reach the 10,000 run mark in Test cricket.

In fact, Gavaskar amusingly recalled an occasion when he walked up to his partner, Chetan Chauhan, on the pitch and asked him to shield him from having to face Yardley. While Yardley was an accomplished bowler in his own right, his record was rather modest. He played in 33 Tests and picked up 126 wickets at an average of 31.63. On the other hand, Gavaskar was one of the most accomplished batsmen of his time with a distinguished Test record and a reputation second to none in world cricket.

Gavaskar's particular problem, as he further recalled, with Yardley was that he couldn't pick his deliveries from his hand since Yardley, according to Gavaskar, had an unusually long run up for a spinner.

Gavaskar also revealed that the proudest moment of his career was when India won the 1983 World Cup. He recalled that, as a souvenir, he kept the ball that was used to play the finals of that World Cup. He made sure that the West Indies players had autographed it, as well.