During an interaction with renowned sports presenter and broadcaster Gaurav Kapur in his podcast a couple of years ago, legendary batter Sunil Gavaskar had exclaimed how he would consider the use of abusive language as a form of sledging the opposition as reprehensible.
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Gavaskar played during an era when the West Indian fast bowlers in particular, were hostile and ruthless towards the opposition batters, or simply quite intimidating to face. Despite it all, the ‘Little Master’ would state that all he would experience was some funny banter from their end, but never a thing which might be considered as below the belt.
However, he would later admit that abuse did unfortunately become part of the game during the 90s and early 2000s, and he himself was at the receiving end of the same at one point in his career.
Sunil Gavaskar once hilariously couldn’t understand the cuss words hurled at him in Punjabi
During one of the matches he was part of against Pakistan, Gavaskar revealed how a certain player would hurl expletives at him in the Punjabi language, after the end of each delivery. Quite a popular expletive in the Hindi language as well (involving invoking the name of one’s sister), it was the word spoken in the Punjabi accent by the player which would go above Gavaskar’s head.
“I didn’t know that was how it was pronounced in Punjabi. The guy was standing at the end of every other delivery, and he was just calling me ‘bhen-bhen‘ something like that! I knew he was abusing me because after ‘bhen’ there was something,” Gavaskar hilariously explained what all transpired that day.
“The Punjabis in the team collapsed” – Gavaskar
Gavaskar later on added how the Punjabis in the Indian team dressing room could not control their laughter, when they got to know how the former had no idea what all was being said to him.
“That was the first time they (Indian players) had seen this happening. That’s what I’m saying. We didn’t have this sledging or abusing for most of the time that we played. So the guys are like, ‘What is he doing? What is he saying?’, when I had got back to the change room for the interval. And, I said, ‘obviously he’s saying something to me, but what has the ‘band’ gotta to with it?’. He’s saying ‘bant bant’ something like that. The Punjabis in the team collapsed. They said ‘you know, he’s not saying ‘bant’, but ‘behen‘ (sister)’. But, that’s how it’s pronounced in Punjabi,” Gavaskar exclaimed during the podcast.
