Anshuman Gaekwad

Some Lesser Known Facts About Anshuman Gaekwad

• He was born into a Marathi family.

• Anshuman Gaekwad’s family is distantly related to the Baroda royal family. His great-grandfather was a brother of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III and worked in the Baroda state’s army. When Sayajirao died in 1939, his grandson Pratapsinhrao Gaekwad became the Maharaja. Anshuman’s father, Dattajirao Gaekwad, was called upon by the royal family at the age of 11 to stay at Laxmi Vilas Palace, Baroda as a companion to Prince Fatehsinghrao Gaekwad. Dattajirao later worked as the Deputy Comptroller for the state of Baroda.

• His father, Dattajirao Gaekwad, was also a cricketer, who played 11 Tests for India between 1952 and 1961. He died in Vadodara due to age-related ailments on 13 February 2024.

• As a kid, he often went to practice sessions at the Moti Bagh ground with his father, Dattajirao Gaekwad. There, veterans like his father, Vijay Hazare, and Jayasinghrao Ghorpade, would hold coaching camps throughout the year.

• Anshuman maternal family also fueled his passion for the sport. Aunshu’s maternal grandfather, Wyankatrao Narsimharao Ghorpade, was also a cricketer who led the Baroda cricket team to its first Ranji Trophy win in 1942-43.

• Anshuman went to primary school at The Convent of Jesus and Mary, which was about 10 km from his house. To make getting to school easier, he would travel with the younger sisters of Maharaja Fatehsinhrao, who went to the same school. A servant would pick up Aunshu on a bike, take him to the palace, and then he’d go by car. But he always biked back home. After doing this for three years and seeing how tired Aunshu was by the time he got home at 6:30 pm, Dattaji decided to switch him to a closer school.

• He started playing cricket at the university level in 1969.

• After a year of playing cricket at the university, he was picked as a bowler for the Baroda team in the 1969-70 season.

• He played for Baroda in local competitions and scored over 12,000 runs, including 34 hundreds.

• In his first Test match, he made 36 runs.

• In a match in Jamaica against the West Indies in 1975-76, Michael Holding hit him hard on the ear, fatally injuring him. He was on 81 runs when Holding’s fastball damaged his eardrum. He had to go to the hospital and was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for two days. He had several operations, but the injury caused permanent hearing issues.

• He got the nickname “The Great Wall” because of his strong defence against the skilled West Indies bowlers, who were considered the best during his time.

• He hit his first Test hundred against the West Indies in the 1978-79 cricket season.

• One of the standout moments of his career was making a double century against Pakistan in a Test match in Jalandhar on 29 September 1983. Pakistan had put up a score of 337 runs. India didn’t start well and lost some early wickets, but Gaekwad didn’t give up. He scored 201 runs from 436 balls and was at the crease for 671 minutes. This was one of the slowest double centuries in first-class cricket. The match ended in a draw, but Gaekwad earned a reputation for being able to stay calm and concentrate under pressure.

• He represented India in the 1975 and 1979 Cricket World Cups.

  

• Anshuman Gaekwad got married to Jyoti Gaekwad after a five-year-long courtship.

• He played in 15 One Day Internationals (ODIs), scoring a total of 269 runs at an average of 20.69.

• He played in 40 Test matches for India, scoring 1985 runs with an average of 30.07. Sunil Gavaskar was his partner in opening the innings in 29 of those Tests.

  

• After he stopped playing international cricket, Gaekwad was a national cricket selector from 1992 to 1996. During this time, he was part of the decision-making process when the famous cricketer Kapil Dev retired in 1994.

• He was the coach of the Indian cricket team from October 1997 to September 1999. He took over from Madan Lal when the Indian team was not doing well internationally. He did a good job with the one-day team, but after a tough tour in Australia in 1999 and a disappointing World Cup that year, his time as coach came to an end.

  

• In 2000, Gaekwad became the coach of the national cricket team again, but this time his term was short only a few months. After Kapil Dev resigned, Gaekwad stepped in before John Wright took over.

• Later, Anshuman Gaekwad worked for the Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals Limited in Vadodara and chose to retire early in 2000.

• In 2004, he took on the role of executive director at ProCricket in the United States.

• BCCI approached him to be on the interview panel to select the women’s coach in 2018.

• In 2019, the Supreme Court’s Committee of Administrators chose Kapil Dev, Anshuman Gaekwad, and Shantha Rangaswamy to form a three-person committee responsible for selecting India’s next head cricket coach.

  

• In 2022, Gaekwad was elected as the President of the Indian Cricketers’ Association (ICA).

• He also served on the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) and was a member of the BCCI Apex Council.

• In June 2018, he was given the C. K. Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award by the BCCI, which is the highest honour conferred by the BCCI on a former player. He was celebrated as one of India’s top coaches and received a prize of 25 lakh rupees.

• Gaekwad was also called Charlie by his cricket teammates and friends. This nickname was given to him by a bar girl during a cricket tour in New Zealand. In an interview, fellow cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar narrated the incident and said,
  

  We were sitting in a bar. Everyone was ordering a drink. And the bar girl asked him: ‘What can I serve you, Charlie?’ I asked her why Charlie and she said he was wearing specs. That’s how he was nicknamed Charlie.”

• In May 2023, he published his autobiography titled ‘Guts Amidst Bloodbath’ with Sunil Gavaskar there at the launch.
  

• In the same year, Gaekwad also found out he had myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which is a kind of blood cancer. He then underwent chemotherapy treatment at a private hospital in Vadodara.

• He loved to eat spicy food.

• On 14 July 2024, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) decided to release Rs. 1 crore as financial assistance to Gaekwad who was undergoing treatment for blood cancer in London. The board’s decision came after emotional appeals from Kapil Dev and Sandeep Patil.