The delicate touch of a surgeon
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
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Thankfully, the players generated more newspaper copy than the umpires on the second day at the SCG and in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck looks at VVS Laxman’s love of playing Australia.
It is passing strange that Laxman reserves his best performances for his team's most feared opponent. Against lesser sides he can look awkward, like a bear trying to perform a jig. At such times he seems inferior to tap-dancing colleagues. Then his mind becomes bogged down with thoughts of his own fallibility and his boots might as well be cased in mud.
Mike Coward writes in the Australian that cricket fans should be thankful that Laxman did not follow the advice of his parents and give up on cricket to concentrate on a medical career.
When he is on song and living up to the sobriquet of Very Very Special, there is no more attractive batsman in world cricket. One can envisage Laxman as a surgeon, deftly and delicately cutting and suturing, then accepting with grace the commendations of those who assisted. He is a humble man.
In the Daily Telegraph, Jon Pierik looks at some of the costly mistakes made by Adam Gilchrist and Mitchell Johnson.
But of course there was still room for questions over umpiring and the likes. Robert Craddock in his Courier-Mail blog argues that reminiscing over batsmen who used to walk is folly – remember WG Grace? Jake Niall, who is primarily an Australian football writer for the Age, wants a technological revolution to help umpires, while Malcolm Conn in the Australian suggests that match referees are useless.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here