The underappreciated fulcrum

When the third day's play began in the India-South Africa Test match at Kolkata,the SAffers had an outside shot at pulling something off. Only one frontline batsman remained between the SAffers and the tail - VVS Laxman. For the entire day the visitors tried all kinds of lines, lengths, and bowlers at him. Barring an inside-edge for four and a half-chance to JP Duminy at gully, the fellow held firm.

Joining him in this endeavor was his skipper, MS Dhoni. When he first came on the scene, long hair with streaks, a sledgehammer for a bat, and hard hands behind the wickets, Dhoni seemed destined for a decent career in the Shahid Afridi mode - enough performances to keep people talking, but not really amounting to historical significance. While Samson lost his mojo when his hair was cut off, Dhoni has gone from strength to strength. His greatest gift is his mental strength to not worry about other people's perceptions. He is his own man. He possesses a gawky, awkward-looking, bottom-handed heavy approach to batting but it is a method that works. Behind the stumps he has improved leaps and bounds and is a safe catcher, improving with each year.

As a captain, Dhoni has reinvented his batting approach and is a dangerously steady (and overwhelmingly underrated) performer these days. As a captain, he has scored just over a 1000 runs at an average of 72.85, with 3 centuries and 8 fifties in just 18 innings. These are numbers that would be proudly bandied about if it were a front-line batsman (for comparison, just ask Michael Hussey, who had 4 centuries and 7 fifties in 22 innings after the first 13 Tests of his career - the most purple phase of his when his average was 81, earning him the Mr. Cricket sobriquet).

If the above numbers were impressive, here's what Laxman has done. In the last 13 Tests that VVS has played, he has scored 1094 runs at an average of 72.93 with 3 centuries and 8 fifties in 21 innings. More recently, he has scored 2 centuries and 6 fifties in 11 innings, including at least one score of 50 in the last 7 Tests. The fortunes of the Indian team have hinged upon him as much as they have hinged upon the more celebrated players in the team. It is telling that the only match that Dhoni has lost as a captain was one which Laxman (and Dravid, of course) wasn't there.

(AFP 2010, via CricInfo)

When the Test team was announced, I wanted Laxman to play at #3. Watching M. Vijay and S. Badrinath get sorted out by the SAffer pacers made me understand why he was used at #5. VVS absorbs pressure, does not get frustrated by long periods of drought (he even had a stretch of 37 balls - almost 50 minutes - when he did not score a run in the innings yesterday), and is much tougher than most of his critics (the few that remain) give him credit for. Yesterday, he looked like he could bat forever, and if required to, he would have, too. Whilst Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar provided the impetus at the start and Dhoni at the end, the fulcrum of the innings was Laxman.

It took over a 100 Test matches for Laxman to finally get the recognition and aura he deserves. His life is forever entwined with the 2001 Kolkata Test, but there have been too many defining innings of late to mark him down as an underachiever. If he had the luxury of batting with more frontline batsmen than he did over his career, his conversion rate (15 centuries, 43 fifties) would have been skewed a little better.

There were the 8 centurions in the Indian inning (check out the SAffer bowling card). The SAffer first inning had a very unique feature - two batsmen scored centuries, netting 214 runs between them, yet the team score did not reach 300. I am sure CricInfo will inform me in a few days whether this was the lowest score to feature two centurions, but it was a telling display that may well have sealed the match. (Update: As expected, CricInfo has come through with the list. This effort of the SAffers ranks as the third-lowest ever all-out score to feature two centuries.)

South Africa needs to survive two days. Bad light is bound to clip about 10 overs off each day, leaving them about 160 overs to negotiate. Luckily for them, some thunderstorms have been forecast. This effectively means that the SAffers are reduced to batting for survival, trailing India by almost 350 runs at the start of the second inning. India needs 10 bits of inspiration/luck/skill to go its way. My money is on India. The only thing that can change it is the rain.

The reality is that there is no clear-cut #1 Test-playing team any more. In the next couple of days we will know whether the Mother Nature wants India or South Africa to be the #1 team in the ICC Test rankings on April 1st.