Former Pakistan skipper Javed Miandad was known as much for his personality as he was for his extraordinary prowess with the bat. He and Sunil Gavaskar have led Pakistan and India respectively in a number of memorable encounters throughout the 1980’s.
Gavaskar recalled an instance when he and Miandad pranked former Australian skipper Ian Chappell, who was a commentator in one of the matches.
“Both of us were down for the toss which normally has to take place half an hour before the match,” said Gavaskar on the Sony Ten show Pit Stop which was streamed live on the network’s Facebook page. He had Ramiz Raja for company.
“The cameraperson was there but there was no sign of Ian Chappell, he had got delayed somewhere. We were waiting for him and suddenly saw Ian coming in from the boundary near the sight screen.
“You give Javed half an opportunity to play a joke on anybody and he jumps on it. I said to him, ‘Shall we pretend that we are done with the coin toss. We can pretend that we were waiting, we will look at our watches and start walking away.’
“The cameraperson also played along. I pretended to spin the coin up, Javed pretended to pick it, we shook hands and then we started walking towards the changing room. Then suddenly Ian Chappell started putting on his jacket and running towards us asking us to wait.
“It was great fun, we actually hadn’t done anything so we did the toss. I won’t use the words (Chappell) used first and then he said, ‘you guys gave me a heart attack’.”
Gavaskar said that the two sets of teams got along very well off the pitch although their encounters were always high on intensity.
“Credit for that has to go to the tournaments held in Sharjah. Those tournaments started in 1981 and India and Pakistan had gone there for a couple of seasons. Those were day matches and in the evenings, players of both teams would be invited to a common place and there you got to know each other. Therefore we got along very well off the field. Friendships were made which are there even now,” he said.