“We met, and Sunil saw these pads and he said oh...these are fantastic, I will try them. When he tried these pads in the nets, it helped his footwork. So he started wearing them,” Dilip recalls. “In those days there was no question of endorsement or anything. It was just something he wanted to wear. And he continued to wear them throughout his career.”

Jagodia says, it was Gavaskar really, and then Sachin who helped his brand of pads become what it is now. And he still doesn’t pay any endorsements. “It was really Sunil. He started wearing it when it was totally revolutionary — with all that controversy of the ball bouncing off too much after it hit the pad, he actually established the product as such. No doubt that Sachin, who is such a huge star, took the product to the next level and made it a generic name in pads category,” he says gleefully.

The story is that when Sachin Tendulkar came along, Gavaskar was his hero and he gave Tendulkar a pair of his old pads and that’s how he started. “Sachin was very superstitious, and because those old-fashioned pads had leather straps, we had to make pads with leather straps, because he won’t wear sticker pads, like modern cricketers.

“Laxman also wanted leather straps, so it’s becoming kind of a nightmare for us,” he laughs off. “And they all will tell you, apart from the fact that these pads look very modern even after 20 years since they first came along, they mainly helps in use of the feet against spinners. It’s moulded so you don’t have any bulkiness, and they are light, good for running between wickets.”

... contd.