He was called the Viv Richards of Mumbai. He lent Tendulkar the bat that made a first century. Then a gangster brother, the police, and the bottle took everything. Gurav died on March 31 2026. This is his story.
Far, far away from Wankhede Stadium and even further away from the man who is the cynosure of it, in a 200-sq ft cramped dwelling with paint peeling off the walls, lurks another Sachin story.
On most days, at most hours, on a bare rickety bed here, in Mumbai’s Nalasopara, you can find Anil Gurav. The smell of cheap alcohol rests around him, as do years of pain in his wild, staring, glazed eyes. It’s his memory that remains the sharpest, particularly so these days. And as the Tendulkar story draws to a glorious end, these memories have been flooding back to Gurav: of how it was he who had once been the chosen one, of being called the Viv Richards of Mumbai, the next big thing from the city since Sunil Gavaskar, of playing with that curly haired boy from Bandra who had always been so talented, of teaching him a few tricks, and of once, long, long ago, lending a cricket bat with which the boy would hit his first competitive century — one of a historic many.