He has celebrated many landmarks as a cricketer in his distinguished career and is now on the threshold of a much-sought-after milestone in life. Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, the first batsman to scale Test cricket's Mount Everest of 10,000 runs and the creator of a spate of other records, is to turn 60 tomorrow.

The marks set by Gavaskar, the first batsman to surpass Sir Donald Bradman’s 29 centuries in Tests, may have been confined to history, but his contribution to Indian cricket initially and world cricket later will remain forever.

He’s a short-statured man who, as a batsman, possessed sound technique that helped counter the world's most fearsome fast men, including the great West Indian bowlers of the 1970s and 1980s, without the help of a helmet. More than his runs or centuries, the most important lesson that Gavaskar gave the rest of the Indian cricketers was that they need not be overawed by teams like Australia, England and the West Indies.

It was he and the other “Little Master”, Gundappa Viswanath, who is now Gavaskar’s brother-in-law, who stood like the Rock of Gibraltar in a largely fragile Indian batting line-up against the fast bowlers of the world. During their playing career, the modern-day protective equipment was in its infancy and there was no restriction on the number of bumpers that could be bowled in an over, leading to intimidatory stuff delivered with impunity by the likes of Roberts, Holding, Lillee and Thomson.

In spite of these handicaps and on wickets which were considered more helpful to the bowlers all around the world than they are at present, Gavaskar led from the forefront as the Indian opener day-in and out. In an international career spanning 16 years, he scored 10,122 runs from 125 Tests with a then record of 34 Test tons. Playing with his bat very close to his pads, Gavaskar was the epitome of copybook batting which might be seen as somewhat archaic in the present age of Twenty20 cricket.

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