During a test at Bengaluru between India and Australia in September 1979, S.M. Gavaskar completed 5000 runs of his test career. He made ten runs in this match. He reached 5000 runs land mark when he was on three. I gave him the list of other batsman who had reached the land mark of 5000 runs in tests.

He was the editor of Sports World, a weekly publication from Calcutta. He wrote thus “Even though I scored ten runs in this game, I had completed 5000 runs of my test career when I was on three. The importance of this achievement was not known to me, till the statistician H.R. Gopala Krishna gave me a complete list of other batsmen who have completed 5000 test runs”. I cherish the wordings of S.M. Gavaskar verbatim even after 39 years nine months.

Another important event I want to recollect that took place in this year. Immediately after the test against Australia, Bengaluru hosted a test against Pakistan in November 1979. Madras TV station was in charge of televising this match. They needed a Statistician . Mr Raghavan – Station Director and Programme Executive approached authorities of Karnataka State Cricket Association and my name was suggested. They were told that I would be available at YMCA Grounds where I had an umpiring assignment. They came to the ground post lunch and waited for nearly two and half hours as the match got over at 5.00 PM. They met me and requested me to officiate the game for TV. 

I refused the offer as I have accepted the All India Radio assignment. They had a scorer by name Arunachalam who was just a scorer with no statistics at all. My dual role as a scorer-cum-statistician had caught up with the media already.

Dr. Narottam Puri was one of the commentators for this game and he used to send a staff of Doordarshan to AIR Hindi booth requesting for statistical tit bits of the match. I used a carbon sheet and catered the stats to both the booths.