Anshuman Gaekwad's scoring range was limited and his batting lacked elegance, but raw courage against pace that he possessed was a precious commodity in Indian cricket, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he made it into the team on that virtue alone. He also had terrific reserves of patience and concentration - he batted 671 minutes for his Test-best 201 against Pakistan at Jalandhar in 1982-83. This was then the slowest double-century in first-class cricket. Gaekwad's guts-and-glory saga reached its peak when, bruised and battered by Michael Holding's modern-day Bodyline in the 1975-76 Jamaica bloodbath, he scored 81, a feat rendered doubly impressive by the fact that it came in an era when there were neither helmets nor restrictions on bouncers. Gaekwad had to have an operation after he was tattooed on the ear by a Holding bouncer that punctured his eardrum. He signed off on a high, with a hundred in his last first-class match and later became a selector and the national coach.
H Natarajan