Opening Doorz
“Celebrating Life”
By Moody Marty | Opening Doorz Editorial | August 11, 2026 Preface: Apart from being a class cricketer, Dilip Sardesai was also a gentleman to the core. I remember him […]
By Moody Marty | Opening Doorz Editorial | August 11, 2026
Preface: Apart from being a class cricketer, Dilip Sardesai was also a gentleman to the core. I remember him offering his thick palm in a warm handshake to journalists, including me, whenever he walked into the Press Box at Wankhede or the CCI. I was a rookie back then in the late 80s, but his firm handshake and sunshine smile made me feel important. I guess that was his way of making everyone around him feel comfortable.
Perhaps that is why I am not entirely comfortable with this gate-naming business. It just doesn’t seem big enough for the man India, and Mumbai in particular, should remember.
At Wankhede Stadium, Dilip Sardesai gets a gate almost twenty years after his passing. Meanwhile, Rohit Sharma has a stand named after him… already. And why are we celebrating this?
I know the Sardesai family is pleased. I know the MCA (Mumbai Cricket Association) would like us to regard this as another respectful acknowledgement of one of Mumbai’s cricketing greats. And I am sure there is no shortage of people congratulating everyone involved. Look at social media; everyone who is anyone (in local cricket) is posing in front of the gate and clicking happy selfies.
And that is what annoys me most about the celebrations surrounding this announcement. We have become so accustomed to being grateful for crumbs that we no longer seem interested in asking whether the crumb is sufficient.
I have no problem whatsoever with the Sardesai family celebrating this. Rajdeep Sardesai, Dilip’s son, is entitled to be proud that his father’s name will now be visible at Wankhede. He is entitled to thank the people in the MCA who made it happen. He should. But [as a journalist] he can also ask, “Is this really the best you could do?”
A family should not be expected to respond to a long-awaited tribute with a complaint simply because a columnist happens to think the tribute should have been grander. Methinks there is something distasteful about honouring a man who helped create some of the earliest great chapters in Indian cricket by simply putting his name on a gate after all these years!
Dilip Sardesai deserves to be remembered at Wankhede. There is no argument about that. The argument is about whether a gate is an appropriate recognition for a cricketer of his stature, and why it has taken the MCA nearly two decades since his death to arrive at this rather modest solution.
Sardesai died in 2007, but his contribution to Indian cricket had been etched into history long before that. He was one of the principal figures in India’s extraordinary 1971 tour of the West Indies, when we won a Test series there for the first time. He scored heavily when it mattered, stood up to an intimidating West Indian attack and played a significant role in a victory that changed India’s belief in what was possible abroad.
This was a very different Indian cricketing world. There were no IPL contracts, vast television rights, sophisticated sports science departments, social-media armies or enormous commercial machinery surrounding every international cricketer. Indian cricket was still fighting for recognition, and Sardesai was one of the men making that case on the field. That history matters. A gate, really?
Before anyone accuses me of diminishing Rohit, let me save you the trouble. I am doing no such thing. Rohit Sharma is a magnificent cricketer, and an important figure in Indian cricket. His achievements deserve recognition, and there is nothing objectionable about the MCA naming a stand after him. But Rohit’s elevation makes the Sardesai question more uncomfortable, not less. Rohit has been given one of the stadium’s more significant spaces while he is still a living, active cricketer. Sardesai, after a lifetime in which he helped establish the reputation of Indian cricket, has waited until 2026 to have his name attached to a gate.
A stand and a gate are not interchangeable forms of recognition. They may both carry a person’s name, but they do not occupy the same place in the hierarchy of a stadium. One is where spectators sit and watch the game; the other is where they enter and leave. One becomes a permanent part of the stadium’s identity. The other is, quite literally, a passageway.
According to me, Dilip Sardesai does not need a plaque, a gate or a stand to establish his place in Indian cricket history. His cricket did that a long time ago. The people who run Wankhede, however, do have a responsibility to decide how that history is represented. If Rohit Sharma can have a stand, while Sardesai receives a gate nearly twenty years after his death, then I think the comparison deserves to be made rather than politely ignored.
To be honest, I think it is disrespectful of me to mention the names of Dilip Sardesai and Rohit Sharma in the same sentence.
With that, I close the door… sorry, gate, to the conversation.
[Moody Marty: Sometimes funny, sometimes informative, always downright forthright!]
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