Hail the cricket heroes!

Let’s start with the greatest cricketer to walk this earth (in the opinion of most cricket followers) — Sir Garfield Sobers. He was asked about his hero by Sunil Gavaskar in 1983 when the Indian batting great was editor of Indian Cricketer magazine. Sobers said Everton Weekes was his hero growing up and they had a memorable partnership in the 1957 Lord’s Test. Sobers said it was a green wicket and Weekes’s best knock of the series was that second innings 90. Sobers, who scored 66, put on a century partnership with his hero.
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Sunil Gavaskar, who spoke to Sobers about his hero and lots more in that Indian Cricketer annual issue grew up idolising West Indian Rohan Kanhai, Interestingly, Kanhai was part of Gavaskar’s Test debut series in the West Indies in 1971. Heroes meant a lot to Gavaskar. In 1983, he wrote a book called Idols on his favourite cricketers. On the Dedication page, Gavaskar wrote, “Dedicated to the many cricketing idols who are not in this book.”
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Don Bradman was a hero to a generation of Australians. But who was his hero? It was John Taylor, Australia’s top-order batsman whom Bradman saw while he witnessed his first Test as a spectator at the Sydney Cricket Ground in February-March 1921. “My great favourite was Johnny Taylor. He was my boyhood hero, though I had never met him, and I can still remember the sinking feeling which came over me when Patsy Hendren caught him out [for 32 off England captain JWHT Douglas],” Bradman wrote in Farewell to Cricket. It was after this Test match that the young Don told his father, “I shall never be satisfied until I play on this ground.”

Sachin Tendulkar speaks with Sunil Gavaskar during the opening day of the first Test match between India and West Indies at the Kotla in New Delhi on November 6, 2011. Pic/Getty Images
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Viv Richards, like Garfield Sobers idolised Everton Weekes. The run machine of the 1940s and 1950s thrilled and frustrated Indian spectators as he scored four consecutive Test centuries in the 1948-49 series in India. He followed that up 90 in the fourth Test at Chennai.
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When it came to heroes, Viv Richards and Sunil Gavaskar were Sachin Tendulkar’s favourite batsmen. While interviewing Tendulkar for his first print edition interview that appeared in mid-day in the late 1980s, writer Sunil Warrier said, “Sachin does not miss an opportunity to see them in action, either on video or in the cricketing arena.”
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The late Bishan Singh Bedi idolised Garry Sobers, Indian leg-spin great Subhash Gupte, and England’s left-arm spinner Tony Lock. Bedi watched Sobers & Co from the boundary line in the West Indians vs North Zone game at Amritsar in 1959 and revealed in Bishan — Portrait of a Cricketer by Suresh Menon that he was, “too shy to rush to my heroes for autographs.” Bedi made his India debut against Sobers’s West Indians in 1967-68
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Sanjay Manjrekar’s hero was Sunil Gavaskar. He ended up playing for the same club as Gavaskar (Dadar Union Sporting Club) as well as the same firm on the inter-office circuit (Nirlon Sports Club). In July 2024, when Gavaskar turned 75, Manjrekar tweeted: “Happy birthday day to the one and only Sunil Gavaskar! The one reason I took up cricket & wanted to be a top order batter.”
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Greg Chappell’s all-time favourite player was Neil Harvey, the last surviving member of Don Bradman’s 1948 team. Interestingly, Chappell was picked for Australia by a committee that comprised the great left-hander. Dennis Lillee and wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh made their debut in the same 1970-71 Ashes series.
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What better opportunity to meet one’s idol in the first international match you play against him and score runs against his side. This is what happened to Sandeep Patil, who was taken to meet Greg Chappell after he led India to victory in India’s opening game of the 1980-81 triangular series at Melbourne. Patil smashed a 70-ball 64 and earned the man of the 
match award.
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Former India women’s cricket captain Diana Edulji idolised Bishan Singh Bedi. The left-arm spin stalwart had Edulji (also a left-arm spinner) bowl in the Bedi-led Indian team nets. “He taught me the armer which got me a lot of wickets in UK. A great guy and a wonderful human being. I would like to add Sunil [Gavaskar] too who used to give us lectures on batting and how to be a professional cricketer. In the early 1970s, he came to Mrs Aloo Bamjee’s [mentor to several women cricketers] house to give a lecture and how to train with the hanging ball.”
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Ravi Shastri, another left-arm spinner, was an admirer of Gundappa Vishwanath. He tells us that he once met his hero at Koshy’s in Bengaluru during a junior India camp. Shastri, who was with his future India Test teammates B Arun and L Sivaramakrishnan at the famous restaurant, grabbed the chance to go up to the batting stylist to say hello before he went about knocking back some beer.
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Pune-based Shubhangi Kulkarni, the former India women’s captain’s heroes were Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath. She later met them at Hotel Ajit when they were in Pune for a zonal game. Kulkarni along with former Baroda player Jairaj ‘Raju’ Mehta was Gavaskar’s partner for several years at Sunny’s Sports Boutique, a popular sports outlet and manufacturer of cricket gear at the same Hotel Ajit.