First hour will be key: Laxman

Dec 29, 2010 |

Correspondent

Durban, Dec. 28: ‘V.V.S. Laxman is the danger-man,’ South Africa’s No.5 AB de Villiers had said of his Indian counterpart after the second day of the Boxing Day Test here, and that’s exactly what transpired.

Laxman’s 96 has provided India with a tangible opportunity of levelling the series.

“The first hour could dec-ide everything. If we can get Jacques Kallis early, it can put a lot of pressure on the South Africans. We saw in the first innings, the moment Hashim Amla and Kallis got out, we managed to a lot of pressure on the other batsmen. I think Kallis’ wicket will be very crucial,” Laxman said after the third day’s play.

Laxman missed out on what would have been his 17th Test hundred, but felt doing well for India was what mattered the most. “I’m a little disappointed at not being able to get a hundred because I’ve never had one in South Africa. Having said that, getting a 300-odd run lead was quite handy.

“Doing well for the team is the only motivation for me and the bowlers got us back well in the first innings. It was just a matter of one partnership and luckily me and Zak (Zaheer) had that,” he added.

“I thought Zaheer was more aggressive than me today. The tailenders take a lot of pride in their batting. They have been working a lot on it and understand the importance of contributing,” Laxman said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/49722" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-ec458859f18b21c048b5f3ffc3e550d6" value="form-ec458859f18b21c048b5f3ffc3e550d6" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="90093029" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>