JOIN USNerves of steel that India thrive on
Laxman’s batting is disarming. No one in the modern game bats with as much flair and ease; he doesn’t so much dismiss the ball from his presence as sends it on its was almost apologetically, caressing and coaxing it towards the boundary.
So is his candour. The ready smile and that interested nod are no put-on. The recent extraneous appreciation of his status as a genuine match-winner hasn’t brought about any discernible change in behaviour.
He could so easily have turned around and pointed to numerous previous unacknowledged game-changing contributions but typically, he has taken new-found adulation with as much grace as when people unfairly put his head on the chopping block at the first hint of failure.
Teams around the world respect the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, fear the impact of Virender Sehwag’s blistering willow, nothing terrorises them more than Laxman still batting when India are driven to a corner. Ricky Ponting admitted as much after Laxman’s Mohali heroics turned a certain Indian defeat into an incredible triumph.
On the eve of the third day of the Durban Test, AB de Villiers had singled out Laxman as the danger man with India ahead by 166. True to reputation, the 36-year-old conjured a magical 96, perhaps his finest Test innings, to help India set a target beyond the Proteas.
It was his second 90 in two months, after another resilient fightback pulled India out of the morass of 15 for five and to an honourable draw in Ahmedabad against New Zealand.
“You are happy at one level that you have been able to absorb the pressure and play an important knock for the team,” Laxman revealed, candidly, as he spoke of balancing the joy of bailing the team out and the disappointment of missing out on three figures. “But from the personal milestone point of view, you will be very disappointed because my conversion rate hasn’t been great. I have 49 fifties but only 16 Test hundreds. From a personal point of view, I would have been happier if I had got a hundred in these games but from a team perspective, I have done reasonably well to bail us out of a tough situation.”
It’s this selflessness that has characterised Laxman’s cricket all through a career now into its 15th year. He has been the eternal giver -- the giver of shape to dreams, the giver of joy to millions, the giver of steel and spine and backbone to the Indian batting.
And he has done all this quietly, with style and grace and elegance, naturally understated and the ultimate example of what class is all about. Laxman has been involved in multiple triple-hundred partnerships with the likes of Dravid and Tendulkar, but it’s his ability to turn up and transfer the pressure on to the opposition in seemingly lost causes that has taken him to a different plane.
Laxman has always been at a loss to put in words just how he manages to stay so calm, focussed and nerveless in the most demanding situations. “You do have pressure, and the pressure differs from match to match,” he maintained. “The situation like the one in Durban in both innings, it gets the best out of me. I don’t know the reason why, but I just want to keep continuing that.”
No one in world cricket, not even Steve Waugh, has had as many crucial, match-turning associations with the tail. Laxman’s marshalling of the lower-order is an extraordinary association born out of mutual trust and respect, and the confidence his positive, logical thinking instils in his partner.
“Batting with the tail boils down to experience, and the rapport I share with each one of them,” he explained, gently but with pride. “Each of them takes a lot of pride in his batting; they don’t want to throw their wickets away, they come out with a fighting spirit.
“(My) rapport with every player in the team is so good. We set ourselves small targets like a five-run partnership or surviving one over and then take it from there. But the most important thing is knowing what they are comfortable with. That’s what I have learnt over the years. If a tailender is not comfortable facing a bowler, I don’t give him the strike. But if he is comfortable, I turn the strike over, keep the score board moving and suddenly, the pressure shifts from us to the opposition.” How simple! How Laxman!