Laxman is an aesthete's delight like his Hyderabadi predecessors

It was some time in the early nineties that I first heard from my former Hyderabad teammates about a striking young batting talent surfacing there. Word spreads quickly through the grapevine in cricket circles and soon VVS Laxman was a name familiar to many of us.

By the time Laxman made his Test debut, I had already seen him in domestic cricket and like many others, been impressed by his temperament and timing. In the big league of Test cricket, he continued to impress, though a couple of years down the road, he had still failed to cement his place in the team. This was not entirely his fault, as the selectors had converted him from a middle-order batsman to an opener.

Notwithstanding his relative early success in this role, I always had misgivings about that move, as rarely have converted openers succeeded in the long term. Even after his swashbuckling 167 at Sydney, I was not convinced he should open the innings. I also felt he tended to play across the line a bit, thanks to his penchant for wristy ondrives. Mind you, I don't pretend to be a batting expert, but as an informed observer, I could draw such a conclusion by watching Channel Nine. I felt it was a tragedy that such a gifted player was unable to correct basic technical flaws and apparently received no help from peers, seniors or coaches in this regard, and I said so in print.

When I watched Laxman in the Kolkata Test against Australia, I was amazed by the transformation in his batting. He was batting much straighter and confirming that his enormous appetite for runs was no longer confined to domestic cricket. (During the Bulawayo Test, however, Sunil Gavaskar expressed the view that Laxman should bat straighter still). Strokes flowed from his bat in a continuous, delightful stream almost throughout his marathon innings.

Laxman does remind me of some classy Hyderabad batsmen. Most of them were an aesthete's delight, but it was the taller batsmen among them, Jaisimha and Azharuddin, with whose batting styles Laxman's bears comparison. Jaisimha could thump the ball when the mood overtook him, but he had wrists of steel that he normally employed to stylish effect. Azharuddin's wristy batting style had considerable impact on Laxman's by his own admission, but he is no imitator. His offside play is so much more controlled and elegant than Azhar's whose on drives are admittedly peerless. He also hooks authoritatively unlike Azhar. And none of his predecessors could match his ability to concentrate for very long periods.

In Zimbabwe, Laxman seems to be suffering from having too many runs in his kitty, tending perhaps to find batting altogether too easy and unconsciously overlooking the need to make adjustments to suit local conditions. I mentioned in an earlier piece the problems our batsmen have on quicker, bouncier tracks abroad. At Bulawayo, Laxman perished to a ball that came to him too quickly for the pull shot he was trying to essay. In India, it would have been a four from the moment it left the bat.