Legendary India cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, who was in conversation with India Today’s Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai on Monday, talked on length about the road ahead for sports. He minced no words and said recovery from the affect of the pandemic will not be an easy job.
“Officials of all the various sporting federations would certainly be banging their heads together to find a solution and I am sure there are many intelligent people in there to be able to come up with some sort of a solution which will keep everybody happy but it’s not gonna be easy,” Gavaskar said.
The 70-year-old cricketer-turned-commentator said the halt in sports has affected the fans as well as the athletes. Gavaskar said that the highlights of old matches can just fill a temporary void and can not solve the real problem.
“Certainly yes. the way things are going we might not be able to see any live sport for maybe 4-5 months. that’s gonna be tough not just on the current players but also those who follow sport. there are so many fans of different sports.”
“For them to be able to only look at the old action after a time it gets boring, for nostalgia you can go back and see what happened earlier but actually you wanna see live sport be it on tv or ground and for that not being able to be seen till September that’s a worrying thing and i am pretty certain that the officials of all the sports are planning plan a, b, c to get over this period of uncertainly,” the former batsman asserted.
The topic of closed door matches has created all sort of buzz once the coronavirus started transcending the national boundaries. There have been suggestions about holding the IPL and T20 World Cup also behind closed doors, but Gavaskar think that could be the last resort.
“I think that’s gonna be absolutely the last resort otherwise you know when you can’t have absolutely anyone at the ground only then you should play without crowds. Every performer likes to perform in front of a crowd which appreciates the skills and temperament. Same in theatre. So i think it’s not gonna be easy on the performers as well. Players also want to do the high fives and hugs,” Sunil Gavaskar opined.
