09 January 2004	Friday	16 Ziqa'ad 1424

MELBOURNE, Jan 8: Rohan Gavaskar wants to carve out his own identity in international cricket and not just be known as the son of Indian batting great Sunil Gavaskar.

The 27-year-old left-handed batsman and spin bowler hopes to make his full international debut in the tri one-day series, which gets underway against Australia here on Friday.

A regular in the India A team, Rohan Gavaskar, named after former West Indian batsman Rohan Kanhai, was a late addition to the one-day squad last week when Mohammad Kaif was ruled out with a thumb injury.

Gavaskar said he "couldn't stop smiling for three days" when told he would join the national squad. He was equally happy to talk about his father, answering questions that have been fired at him since before he made his first-class debut seven years ago.

"It's an honour to be his son, I get up every morning feeling very proud of him, he's been great," he said of his father. "Hopefully now I've got the chance to create my own identity in international cricket.

"Everyone in India has realised I'm my own man and I've got my own cricketing identity, I've been playing first-class cricket for seven years. "Probably the expectations were there when I first started out, but I think now it's a lot better."

Sunil Gavaskar has the world record for the most Test centuries with 34 and is third behind Australians Allan Border and Steve Waugh on the list for Test runs with 10,122.

His son has scored 4,913 runs in 81 first-class matches. Indian captain and Bengal team-mate Sourav Ganguly said Gavaskar was in contention to play in Friday's match.

"He knows he can't be a Sunil Gavaskar and he knows that pressure is going to be on him, but he still leads a normal life and goes and enjoys himself," Ganguly said on Thursday.

"He's a bit more attacking than what I've seen his dad play, but he has to be because he's playing one-day cricket, he's a good player." - Reuters