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We shan’t watch VVS Laxman play Test cricket again. As his on-field aura fades, his career figures in this era of 50-plus averages will begin to seem merely respectable. The number of centuries that he scored in a long career — 17 — will appear modest and his strike rate, just under 50, will strike the future fan as pedestrian.
Yet we, his contemporaries, who have watched him play from 1996 to now, know that he is a very special batsman. If we want to forestall what the great English historian Edward Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity”, we need to set down, for those who will never watch him play, his claim on their attention and his place in the annals of cricket.
He was an upright stylist who pulled very fast bowlers through mid-wicket, who drove the greatest leg-spinner of modern times inside-out over cover and whose flick drew more angles on the onside than a protractor could. He was, at his best, the most reassuring Indian batsman against very quick bowling.
This last attribute is important for any batsman, but especially for an Indian batsman. Brought up on slow, low pitches, Indian batsmen have traditionally struggled with pace and bounce. Even prolific, consistent batsmen who had the occasional bad series against express attacks, like Polly Umrigar, were deemed flawed by a cricketing public acutely conscious of this weakness. Those few who passed the fast bowling test, like Gavaskar and Viswanath and Tendulkar and Dravid, were immediately elevated to our pantheon.
The remarkable thing about Laxman (who belongs in this company) was that he was a specialist batsman who specialised in playing the greatest fast-bowling attack of his time, the world-conquering Australians.
Laxman’s career unfolded against the backdrop of Australian dominance: the great cricketing narrative of our time was India’s attempt to turn back the Australian juggernaut, first at home and then in Australia. Alone amongst the cricketing nations of the world, on either side of the millenium, India defeated Australia at home and then went on to compete on level terms in Australia. This was cricket’s, certainly Indian cricket’s, big story through these years, and Laxman was its star.
The 281 in Calcutta that stopped Waugh’s Australians in their tracks in 2001 would have been enough to guarantee him immortality. It is the greatest innings ever played by an Indian batsman: a big score against a great side in seemingly hopeless circumstances which turned the match and set up an improbable victory. The genius of Laxman was that he turned this innings into a kind of theme song for his career: he kept playing brilliant match-turning knocks against the best side in the world.
In 2003 he made a match-winning 148 in Adelaide, playing second lead to Dravid, almost as if he were repaying Dravid for his supporting 180 in Calcutta.
Laxman could be wildly inconsistent against other sides, but show him McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Warne and he would snap back into his serene, thou-shall-not-pass mode, like some eccentric knight saving his valour for his worthiest foe.
It was fitting that India took over from Australia as the best Test match side in the world on Laxman’s watch; no one had done more to make that possible.
It is also curiously appropriate that he should retire after India’s disastrous tour of Australia. To have called it a day after plundering an inexperienced New Zealand team at home must have been tempting; he had, after all, been selected for the series and no one would have grudged him his last hurrah. But easy glory is not Laxman’s style; if he wasn’t good enough to play against the best, he wasn’t going to feed on minnows. V.V.S. Laxman, Test match batsman, is now officially immortal.
