Cricket legend Gary Sobers today emphasised that youngsters should learn proper defence techniques to be better batsmen.

"What is technique? When the choice is between hitting the ball and having your feet positioned in proper place you know what should it be. But youngsters should learn the proper technique while defending," the all-time great West Indian cricketer said.

Sobers, who has come down from Barbados to be the chief guest at the function to felicitate the 1971 epoch-making Indian squad which was led to away twin series wins over the West Indies and England by Ajit Wadekar, regaled the large audience with his anecdotes.

When the six sixes he had hit for Nottinghamshire off Glamorgan left arm bowler Malcolm Nash was shown on the screen, he brought the roof down saying, "Nash made more money than me by going for talk shows in England as the bowler who was hit by me for six sixes."

He also rated India's leg-spinner Subash Gupte as the greatest bowler he had faced and narrated how he showed Wesley Hall from the non-striker's end how to read Bhagwat Chandrasekhar's unorthodox leg spin bowling with sign language during the 1967 series in India.