VVS Laxman was the key architect of India’s historic win over Australia in Kolkata in 2001, striking an iconic 281 to help the hosts break Australia’s incredible winning run. Dicky Rutnagur paid tribute to him when he was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 2002.
Laxman played his 134th and final Test in January 2012, finishing his international career with 17 Test centuries.
For two reasons at least, the second Test of the 2000/01 series between India and Australia, at Eden Gardens, will stand out among the most prominent landmarks in the game’s history. India’s win brought to an end Australia’s awesome run of 16 wins, the longest ever, and no side following on as far behind as 274 runs had previously come back to win a Test match.
Victory against such heavy odds was too large a feat to be accomplished by just one man. Indeed, three architects went into shaping it: off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, whose 13 wickets included a first-innings hat-trick, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid. To weigh importance of the roles played by each of them might seem unfair, but in truth India owed the largest debt to Laxman. First, he kept the jaws of defeat wrenched apart until they ached and became too weak to snap; and secondly, he scored his epic 281 in the second innings at a rate that left enough time for Harbhajan and his fellow-bowlers to finish the job.
As Laxman grew to full strength, tall and elegant, and big scores became more frequent, his batting acquired a captivating splendour. His driving possessed a Dexterian majesty and his flicked drive through mid-wicket stirred the senses. He was capped in 1996/97, a winter in which India played home-and-away series against South Africa, followed by five Tests in the West Indies. Laxman played eight Tests during this span and passed 50 three times. Indeed, he was given a fair run, but without being allowed a secure place in the batting order; in the Caribbean, he found himself opening, a role for which he had no taste.
His Test career went into a trough and might well have ended on the Australian tour of 1999/2000, when India were whitewashed 0-3. But in his final innings there, at Sydney, he hit a sumptuous 167 out of a total of 261, from only 198 balls. It was, one thought at the time, the sort of innings a batsman plays once in a lifetime. And so it seemed it would be when he was dropped after India’s Mumbai defeat by South Africa not quite two months later. His volume of runs in that season’s Ranji Trophy, a record 1,415 with a record eight hundreds, might almost have been mocking him. In Hyderabad’s semi-final against Karnataka, he made 353, his fourth score at the time over 200.
Laxman achieved little in his one Test when Zimbabwe visited, or for that matter in the first Test against the Australians. That Sydney century seemed a long time ago. But promoted to his favourite No.3 position for the second innings at Eden Gardens, he bettered it handsomely, sustaining his brilliance for ten and a half hours, during which he faced 452 balls. Half-centuries in both innings of the final Test helped India take the series 2-1; they also took his aggregate for the three matches to 503 at an average of 83.83. Medicine would just have to wait a while longer for VVS Laxman.
