V V S Laxman is one player who is spoken very highly when it comes to class, but his talent as a batsman or the amount of runs he has scored is not talked about because invariably the attention in Indian team is on legends Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid and now on Gautam Gambhir.

What goes against Laxman is his batting average of 45.50.  India has produced legendary cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid who have consistently maintained an average of 50 plus in their career and it is here that Laxmans average of 45.50 pales in comparison.  Another thing which goes against Laxman is that even a attacking batsmen like Sehwag has managed to maintain an average of 50 plus for most of his career, while Gautam Gambhir though still in the early days of his career is comfortably averaging 50 plus. However one thing what many people tend to ignore is that Laxmans average of 45.50 is the 8th highest among Indians in all time list.  Laxmans batting average is better that of batting legends like Dilip Vengsarkarand Gundappa Vishwanath and other batsmen.  Even batsmen rated highly like Azharuddin, Mohinder Amaranthand Sourav Ganguly have a batting average which is lower than V V S Laxman

Another thing which goes against Laxman is that he has only 14 hundreds to his name after playing 105 matches.  For a batsmen who is in the team in the role of a specialist and having played more than 100 Tests he should have had more centuries. Sehwag who has played just 71 matches compared to Laxman's 105 and yet has 17 hundreds to his name.  Even Azaharuddin who has played in fewer matches has more hundreds than Laxman. One reason for low count of hundreds for Laxman lies in his conversion.  While Laxmanhas 14 hundreds he has as many as 42 half centuries. Had Laxman been able to convert those half centuries to centuries he would have had more centuries to his credit.

Laxman's career has been strange in many ways.  In his first 16 Tets Laxmanscored a mere 626 runs at an average of 24.07 witha top score of 95 but yet he was retained as he enjoyed the confidence of selectors and the captain.  Anybody else would not have got a chance again in their career but fortunately for Laxman and India and world cricket he was persisted with.   In 1999 after scoring that brilliant 167 against Australia at Sydney Laxmanaverages an imposing 49.92 with 14 hundreds an achievement which is good enough to ensure a place in the playing eleven in any team in the world, but yet he finds that he is under pressure from the selectors and sometimes even dropped too to make way for below ordinary players like Wasim Jaffer or Dinesh Karthik.  Another area where Laxman is very unlucky is that he is always selected to play against top teams like Australia and South Africa where runs are not easy to come by especially in away matches but whenever there is an opportunity to score easy runs and centuries and improve batting average against teams like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe he is dropped to make way for players like Karthik and Jaffer.

Laxman's tally of 6917 runs in 105 Test Matches at an average of 45.50 with 14 centuries is exceeded only by legends Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and former Indian Captain Sourva Ganguly. Apart from the amount of runs he has scored, Laxman is one of the best slip fielders in the world.  Only Rahul Dravid the world record holder with 187 catches has taken more catches than Laxman in Test Matches.  Apart from V V S Laxman, Sunil Gavaskar, Rahul Dravid, Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar are the only Indians to have taken 100 or more catches in Test Matches.

V V S Laxman may not achieve greatness in the same level as that of a Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar of a Rahul Dravid but he can be proud of the fact that he has done enough to be counted among one of the all time greats of the game.

• Written by N R SATISH.
• In category Cricket.
• 14 years ago.

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