On his 44th birthday, ThePrint looks back at VVS Laxman’s career which, like the title of his upcoming autobiography, was ‘281 and Beyond’.
New Delhi: As long as he played for India, V.V.S. Laxman remained the fourth member of the famed ‘Big Four’, or the fifth of the ‘Big Five’ when Virender Sehwag became part of the exclusive club.
Quieter than Dravid, less remarkable than Tendulkar, nowhere near the leader Ganguly was, and not even on the same planet as Sehwag in terms of brutality, Laxman nonetheless was the discerning fan’s favourite.
His wristwork, modelled on his hero and fellow Hyderabadi Mohammad Azharuddin, often left the bowler with a wry smile when a regulation delivery far outside off-stump found itself at the mid-wicket boundary with a lightning flick. But Laxman was far from a one-trick pony.
Australian fast bowler Brett Lee once said: “If you get Dravid, great. If you get Sachin, brilliant. If you get Laxman, it’s a miracle.”
It’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to hear about a man who scored 8,781 runs in 134 Tests at 45.97, with 17 centuries — these aren’t really numbers that put him in the ‘all-time great’ category.
But that was the magic of ‘very very special’ Laxman. He was always about more than the numbers, especially when it came to performing against the team that dominated his era, Australia.
And we haven’t even begun talking about this Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the 281 at Eden Gardens that made him one of the immortals on cricket’s Olympus.
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Getting started
Laxman was born on 1 November 1974 in Hyderabad. Father V. Shantaram and mother V. Satyabhama were both physicians, and even young Laxman enrolled as a medical student. But cricket came calling soon, and medicine was a forgotten dream.
He made his Ranji Trophy debut for Hyderabad in the 1992-93 quarterfinals against Punjab, but scored 0 and 17. Soon, though, he became one of the most prolific batsmen on the domestic scene, earning a Test call-up for the home series against South Africa in 1996. He made his debut in the first Test at Ahmedabad, scoring a second-innings half-century in India’s victory. He also toured South Africa a couple of months later, but failed to set the world alight.
Although a thoroughbred middle-order batsman, he was made to open in the West Indies in March 1997 because of the established Indian middle-order featuring Dravid, Tendulkar, Azharuddin and Ganguly. A few half-centuries followed, but nothing that marked him out for the success that was to come later.
Turning point(s)
The turning point in Laxman’s career came in the 1999-2000 season, when he scored an astonishing 1,415 runs in the Ranji Trophy — still a record for a single season.
Then came his first Test hundred — a stellar second-innings 167 out of a team total of 261 against Steve Waugh’s all-conquering Australians in their backyard of Sydney from the unfamiliar opening position. It was one of the few bright spots for India on that forgettable tour Down Under.
But the rest of the year saw him play just two Test matches — both failures — till Kolkata 2001 arrived, and changed the face of Indian cricket.
Laxman had just been recalled to the side for the first Test in Mumbai, and had scored just 20 and 12. Batting at No.6 in the first innings in Kolkata, Laxman was the lone ranger with 59 as India were forced to follow-on.
Promoted to No.3 for the second essay, Laxman painted a masterpiece that cricket fans know simply as ‘281’. Few innings in the annals of cricket history are given such staccato nicknames; fewer still stir those ‘where was I then’ conversations among fans. This writer, if you’re curious, was in the middle of his Class X boards, watching the game at a friend’s place while ‘studying’.
In the company of old South Zone mate Dravid, Laxman put India on the path to become just the third team to win after following-on in Test history, breaking the confidence of the 16-in-a-row-winning Aussies and levelling the series (with a little help from Harbhajan Singh).
He also played a significant role in the subsequent Chennai Test, with his pair of 60s helping India prove that they were a force to be reckoned with — at least at home.
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Love of the Aussies
These two landmark hundreds were just the beginning of Laxman’s love affair with the Australians. He played 29 Tests against them, scoring 2,434 runs at 49.67, with six centuries, three of which came in Sydney (2000, 2004 and 2008) and another in Adelaide (2003).
He also won India a Test against the Aussies in Mohali in 2010 — battling a bad back and with just numbers 10 and 11 for company, he made an unbeaten 73 that took India home with just one wicket to spare.
It was perhaps fitting that Laxman’s swansong came against the Aussies — on his final tour Down Under in 2011-12, his waning powers resulted in a terrible series as India got swept. He did score 66 at his favourite hunting ground, Sydney, but that was the only innings of note.
He called time on his career after a selection drama ahead of a home series against New Zealand and rumblings of discord with captain M.S. Dhoni — he was picked, but announced his retirement a few days before the first Test in his hometown Hyderabad.
No ‘slips’ with Laxman lurking
Like Dravid, Laxman was an excellent slip fielder, making up for his lack of mobility elsewhere. While Dravid is the leading catcher in history with 210, Laxman has India’s second-highest total, 135.
Their brilliance is something India sorely miss today, when there are no set slip fielders and a high number of catches are dropped.
Laxman also played 86 ODIs and scored 2,338 runs at 30.76, with six hundreds. But the fact that he was a liability in the field (owing to a career-long struggle with his knees, among other things) prevented him from cementing his spot in this format.
He also chanced his arm at the Indian Premier League between 2008 and 2011 for the now-defunct Deccan Chargers franchise and then the shortlived Kochi Tuskers Kerala, without much success.
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Post-retirement
Laxman is now a well-known voice in the commentary box, both in English and Hindi.
He is also slated to turn author soon — his autobiography 281 and Beyond is slated to release this month.
(Statistical research by Ratnadeep Choudhary)