Indian cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar revealed a never-heard-before tale of how former Pakistan Imran Khan played a key part in ensuring that he crossed the elusive mark of 10,000 Test runs before announcing his retirement from the sport.

For those unversed, Gavaskar became the player in history to reach the milestone during a Test match against Pakistan in 1987 at the Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad. This was the penultimate match of the legendary batter's career in the longer format of the game.

Gavaskar revealed that he was set to announce his retirement from the sport, a year before reaching the milestone but a lunch meeting with Imran changed things. The cricket-turned-commentator revealed that Imran informed him about the plans of the Pakistan team to tour India in 1987.

"Absolutely amazing feeling. To get 10,000 runs, when I started career, I got 1,000 runs, I would have been happy. There will be many who will go past but like Tenzig and Edmund Hilary are remembered for being the first to climb Mount Everest, I was the first.

"I got the opportunity to do so because of only Imran Khan. A year before in London after the first Test was won, Imran and I went for lunch in London bang opposite the Harolds in London, there is an Italian restaurant. We went for a lunch there. At this point, I told him, this is going to be my last tour (India tour of England 1986). I am going to quit after this," said Gavaskar on the DP World Dressing Room Show show alongside Ajay Jadeja, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, and Nikhil Chopra.

"He said 'No, no you cannot do this.' I said what do you mean 'It is my choice.' He said 'No, no Pakistan is coming to Inida. I want to beat India with you playing.' I said 'No, Pakistan is not coming.' He said 'No, the ICC meeting is happening, you will hear the announcement next week.' I said if that announcement is there, I will carry on but if it doesn't come, I will finish after the next Test. Sure enough, the announcement came through and I carried on. If I retired at that time, I would have had finished with 9200-9300 runs. Because of that, there were two other series in India, so I got close to 10,000," Gavaskar added.

Gavaskar reached the milestone in the fourth Test of the series. The fifth and final Test at Bengaluru proved to his best. The Indian cricket legend played a heroic knock of 96 on a rank turner in the fourth innings of the match, which proved to his last knock in Test cricket. However, India lost the match by 16 runs and Pakistan won the five-match Test series 1-0 after the first four games ended in draws.

Gavaskar ended his Test career with 10,122 Test runs in 125 Tests at an average of 51.1 with 34 centuries.

Gavaskar retired from all forms of international cricket later in the year after India's defeat in the 1987 Cricket World Cup semi-final to England at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium.

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