Statistician Gopal Krishna officiates 100th international match

The historic India-Afghanistan Test match marked a rare milestone for veteran cricket statistician H R Gopala Krishna as he officiated in his 100th international game.

Krishna, who has officiated as many as 38 Test matches, 57 ODIs and five T20s including the ongoing Afghanistan Test, is also close to completing 50 years in the profession in December.

"I know it is Gopal Krishna's 100th international. I wish him good luck for his achievement," former India captain Sunil Gavaskar, who is a part of commentary team, said.

Reminiscing his association with Gavaskar, Krishna said he was very impressed with unearthing the legendary batsman's record of scoring 5,000 Test runs in the 1979-80 India-Australia Test match at Chinnaswamy stadium.

 

Krishna also credited Gavaskar for boosting his confidence.

"Sunil mentioned me in his Sports World column. This gave me lot of happiness and a boost to do more in the field of scoring and statistics, which was just growing in India,"Krishna said.

Gavaskar was also instrumental in establishing a link between Krishna and Dom Mores, who Krishna helped with the compilation of statistics for the the biography "Sunil Gavaskar".

The book was released during the Jaipur Test between India and Pakistan in 1986-87 and the first recipient of the book was former Pakistan President Zia Ul Haq.

"That was proudest moment for me," Krishna added.

Born

on August 12, 1946 at Channarayapatna in Hassan district of Karnataka, Krishna was selected to assist a radio commentary team of the All India Radio in the capacity of a scorer-cum-statistician for the India-Sri Lanka Test at Kandy and two subsequent ODIs at Colombo in 1985.

He was also one of the statisticians on Doordarshan's panel for Reliance World Cup matches held in India during October-November in 1987.

Asked which was the world record that he cherishes the most, Krishna said it was the 2007 Australia-India series when for the first time a team had posted three figure stands for the seventh and eighth wickets in the same innings.

Another record Krishna cherishes is when the Chinnaswamy stadium became the only ground in the history of T20 games to have three batsmen scoring 100 plus sixes with Chris Gayle smashing 150, A B de Villiers 101 and Virat Kohli 100.