The Laxman factor - viewing is believing

WHAT IS it Sourav accomplished with a Stevengeance on Thursday, March 22, 2001, at Chepauk? Snatched, against insuperable odds, the rubber to erase the impression that India is a team of quitters. Indian cricket was a lost cause even at Eden as, by precisely the midway stage (Tuesday, March 20 afternoon in that watershed Kolkata Test), our scoreboard (when 274 behind) read 115 for 3 - our linchpin Sachin dismissed yet again for 10; and Sourav, so wobbly on his batting feet as to look down for the Kangaroo count. This was the signal for V.V.S. Laxman to arrive as the most happening thing in Indian cricket. If not in world cricket, now that you dial `2816566' for a visual feedback on Eden and Chepauk, looking upon this tables-turner's pace- setting 59 as but the aperitif.

A full six weeks after India did it, you still cannot bring yourself to Ripley believe it, can you? Is Steve Waugh's Australia really now a team greying at the temple, its vision blurring into a mirage as it begins its quality quest for the Ashes? Let us face it, Steve Waugh, despite all his pamphleteering to the contrary before the tour of this country began, had not an iota of doubt, in his Nine Network mindset, that the three Tests in India represented but a hop, step and jump to the essence of it all - the Ashes series in England. Steve Waugh, as a captain with his ear to the ground, did not see Sourav as anything but a pinprick in fulfilling his cherished long-term ambition of saying `Sayonara' to the game with the Ashes his - for celebratory smearing all over Australia. What Laxman (281) and Rahul (180) at Eden; next Rahul (81) and Sachin (126) at Chepauk, therefore, did - the while Sourav `rounded' Harbhajan Singh's arm to groom him to send Australia spinning - was to shatter a dream that Steve Waugh had fondly nursed through a rip-roaring run of 16 Test wins.

Harbhajan Singh had struck in the Wankhede Stadium Test itself, but to no 99-for-4 avail. The Gilchrist gauntlet, Venkatasai Laxman picked it up at Eden, starting with that 59 seeing VVS audaciously advance India's total (from 129 for 9) to 171. In so slashing Australia's lead to 274, Laxman was already stroking the ball with pomp and aplomb. But Steve Waugh, logically, saw this as no more than the condemned eating a hearty meal! Laxman, remember, had presented the aspect of one equally `condemned' on Tuesday, January 4, 2000, when Sachin's India found itself a whopping 402 runs behind at the end of the first innings - as VVS opened with M.S.K. Prasad in the second stanza of the third and final Sydney Test. Laxman had come to such a perilous pass on that fateful morning of January 4 with (let him be reminded since he is dwelling on the point now about ``my natural No. 3 position making all the difference'') Test scores of 41 and 0, at Adelaide, while batting at the same one-down spot that has come, to him, as such a `whirlwindfall'! Only after that 41 and 0 at Adelaide No. 3 was Laxman moved to the slot of opener with the second Test at Melbourne - for him to fall for 5 and 1; followed by just 7 (at No. 2) in the first essay of the Sydney Test.

The willowy artistry of this Hyderabad virtuoso had, up to that decimal point, been nowhere in evidence on the ill-starred 1999- 2000 tour of Australia. Indeed, Laxman stood dropped (even before January 4 of that Sydney Test) from the Indian team for the Carlton & United one-day series to follow in Australia. So Laxman, as he packed his bags before setting out to bat for what he viewed as his last bow for India, publicly noted that he blamed no one for his Ansett cup's being full to the brim. Laxman candidly conceded that he had had his chances and had just not taken them. He had been well poised to do so as he was brought in for the second Test of the March 1998 series vs Australia - where else if not at Eden Gardens! Batting at No. 1 then, Laxman came up with a stroke-filled 95 while joining Navjyot Singh Sidhu (97) in a rousing stand of 191 that made Australia's first innings' total of 233 look spring-chicken feed. But as the final March 1998 Test scene shifted to the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, Laxman - as the in-form opening partner of Sidhu (74 and 44) - could contribute but 6 and 15.

Consistency thus continued to be the first casualty in Laxman's batting as he set out to compose what he saw as his swan-song for India on Tuesday, January 4, 2000, in that Sydney Test. And Laxman's sense of desolation only grew as, at a juncture when India was over 400 runs behind in that Sydney Test, his team slumped to 101 for 4 - Sachin cheaply gone (for 4), as at Eden in 2001. So 300 to make and the match to lose! Laxman had just nothing left to lose by that stage, having been already jettisoned from the Indian touring team in favour of Mohammed Azharuddin - whose return thus (following a never openly revealed C-&-U selection) only Sachin, as captain, torpedoed by putting his back-foot down! So Laxman now just let himself go. Only at this sad turn in his Test career did Laxman belatedly remember that he had smashed Brett Lee while batting for India `A' vs Australia `A'! Laxman thus relaxed his taut grip on the bat and the shots began to flow as they could only from this gallant blade! As many as 27 `elegance-is-all' fours (plus a five) in that epic 167 off 198 balls from an Indian total of just 258 for 8 - that Laxman Sydney odyssey is by now part of Indian cricket lore.

Even Laxman could not be telepictured as possibly surpassing it - until `Eden 2001' wrought the bat-in-hand 275 miracle for this touch artist, single-handed, to neutralise Australia's 274-run leverage. Steve Waugh was not here to be faulted for asking Sourav's India to follow on, his noble objective being to take a brisk 2-0 lead in the series that would leave Chepauk as but a meaningless hurdle to be overcome in the Australian team's dash to the Ashes in England. But Bobby Simpson, even while conceding that ``India's last two Test wins were quite extraordinary'', astonishingly chose to `Cricket Corner' his country's captain (in `The Sportstar' of April 7, 2001) by observing: ``When Australia asked India to bat again, Steve Waugh discarded the well-proven Australian game plan of not enforcing the follow-on, but to bat on and put the opposition right out of the game.'' No sight like hindsight! From a 274-run vantage position, Steve Waugh had, willy-nilly, to win Eden. That he encountered a tall-and-rangy one-man road-block in Laxman is but the rub of the Eden Gardens green.

Which was the better Laxman knock - his 281 on Eden home ground or his 167 on the `alien' Sydney wicket? There is no ground at all for raising such queries about Laxman's batsmanship whose beauty lies in unpredictability, whose reach transcends geographical barriers! But now Laxman is going to be called upon to answer the classic question: ``Who the dickens wrote `Great Expectations'?'' Laxman is going to be asked to be `highly' predictable in his international scoring. And there's the `conforming' rub! For what Brijesh Patel in his prime promised, Venkatasai Laxman has now delivered. Azhar, like Brijesh, had all the shots wristily notated in the book. But, on a pitch with a bit of juice in it, Azhar and Brijesh alike `froze' the moment the red cherry came to lip- height. Here is where Laxman exemplarily differs in his mental make-up against genuine pace. To Laxman, it is immaterial whether Glenn McGrath is bowling in Australia or India. Lax's bat is but an extension of the arm from India to Australia! Indian cricket's New Algebra leaves, as the sole `status symbol', Sachin no longer. A `simultaneous equation' it is, now, in which `The Laxman factor' is a no less vital one.

Take Shane Warne vis-a-vis Laxman. How the chunky Warney preyed upon Rahul's mind! Yet Laxman came to terms with Warne's parabolic slows starting with those three `footworked' fours he brought off for his 12 on the third and final day of the Mumbai Test itself. Laxman (Sachin 1998 style) moved on brisk, light feet to get the measure of Warne. And kept moving, in that vein, all the way to Eden and Chepauk! It was from Laxman that Rahul picked up the knack of coming, at last, to `dancing-down' grips with Warne. Does this mean Rahul is the lesser batsman? By no means. All it means is that one good batsman could always draw inspiration from another good batsman, depending upon the concatenation of circumstances. Rahul, in hitting 180 at Eden, certainly took a leaf out of near triple-tonner Laxman's book. It was, consequently, a fresh-found sense of assurance and urgency that Dravid carried to the Chepauk Test in posting that crucial 81.

Indian cricket is now all about one batsman galvanising the other. Look at the aptitude and application that Shiv Sunder Das brought to his dedicated 84 in the Chepauk Test. Happily, even Sadagopan Ramesh, here, was viewed, at last, to value his wicket while hitting 61 and 25 (before being run out). Only to the extent that run outs are still coming has John Wright, as coach, not made a significant difference. Indian cricket owes more than it knows to this New Zealander's being self-effacingly out to settle his own personal score with old foe Australia! The short point is that Indian cricket is on the upswing as never before. Sourav has brought to our challenge a sense of mission blended with sheer passion. The momentum is there, the rhythm is lacking only in Sourav's own batsmanship. Hopefully, that blistering 74 in the final ODI at Goa means what Sourav implies in his column - that the `Naghmania' of the media in India is misplaced and misdirected. A `Dona Juan' let Sourav then be, his romance with India's captaincy having just begun. His romance with runs for India is what now interests the nation. A few more sharp singles from Sourav's Britannia blade (to build upon that 74 in Goa) and it should all come back. Only moving forward it should be - from the point taken by Steve Waugh.

RAJU BHARATAN

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