World Cup 2023: Sunil Gavaskar reveals one team-bonding exercise which current Team India lacks

Add as a preferred source on Google

Batting great Sunil Gavaskar has recalled India's campaign at the 1983 World Cup and said that the entire traveling from one venue to the other in a bus, helped in building a sense of unity in the team.

In a conversation with Star Sports, Sunil Gavaskar recalled how players moving around in the team bus, bumping into each other in the process, and then watching movies together in the team hotel, helped players understand each other in a better fashion.

He pointed out that team's travel via flights these days and hardly get the opportunity to mingle and talk to each other outside the ground.

"But the best part about travelling in England is that you're travelling in a team bus, where there is very little chance of groups being formed because the coach itself is such that you keep moving around, people bump into each other, they are a bit of a mate ship, leg pulling, if I might call it that, a little bit of teasing here and there and then maybe watching a little bit of the video, which is put up in a video movie," Sunil Gavaskar told Star Sports.

"But it builds a spirit of togetherness, you understand each other and I think that is probably one of the best things that can happen. In an aircraft, when you travel from, what can you do in an aircraft? You can't go and talk to the person behind in your seat, that's very difficult. So I think that is what helped us in 1993 for sure," he added.

World Cup 2023: Sunil Gavaskar explains importance of World Cup warm-up matches

Further, the former opener also recalled the two warm-up matches India played ahead of the World Cup 2023. He said that India were beaten in both the games against minor county teams but learnt important lessons which helped them in ultimately winning the first-ever Cricket World Cup title for India.

“It affects massively because when you talked about that 1983 we played their two games against the minor counties, we lost both those games but there was so much to learn from both those games. Mind you, that was early June, towards the end of May specifically and it was really cold and the pitches were green and the ball was seeming around, so even minor county bowlers an make you look a little ordinary and that’s exactly what happened but it gave us a lot to think about," said Gavaskar.

"The fact that we had just beaten the West Indies in the West Indies a couple of months earlier, gave us the belief that sure this is just the kind of wake -up call that you need. This is just the kind of thing that you need to know that in England, the pitches are going to be different, the conditions are going to be different, the ball will move around in the air off the surface, so better be prepared for that," he concluded.

India are scheduled to face England in their first warm-up match in Guwahati on Saturday, September 30. They will face Netherlands in Trivandrum on October 3 before kicking off their World Cup 2023 campaign against Australia on October 8.