Laxman’s batting was full of aesthetic values

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VVS Laxman’s languid presence will not grace the Test batting crease again, which is a pity because modern cricket needs a counterpoint to sport that has become big business. In an era of instant gratification and loud music, the stylist was like a player in a symphony orchestra etching timeless melodies for the discerning.

The Hyderabadi may have chucked international cricket in pique but history will record that he carried the Nawabi tradition of the city’s cricket in never having to forsake style even in the tightest of match situations. He batted like ML Jaisimha and Azharuddin to preserve a rich legacy that is in danger of being suppressed by the power of the modern bat and the need to put aggression above everything else in the age of T20 cricket.

Wrists of steel were hidden in the soft velvet of his self effacing personality. Never was there a humbler player in the history of Indian cricket, especially one who made such a name for being a match winner who excelled in the face of pressure and took apart, with the utmost grace, the finest bowling attacks in modern Test cricket, such as the one manned by Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and company.

His greatest contribution to the game was the manner in which he turned a Test match on its head with the finest exhibition of batsmanship imaginable. This made for what is still regarded as the greatest Test series of the modern era in which India came back from 1-0 down to win 2-1 against the then world Test champions, Australia.

For close to two days, appropriately enough at the Eden Gardens, not a ball passed his bat except if he let them pass by like the idle wind. Australian slip fielders confessed that they had never seen an exposition of batting skills of that caliber than on the memorable day on which Laxman and Dravid reconstructed India’s position brick by brick in the Test after being asked to follow on.

Often when Laxman is on song, it can appear as if there are two different matches going in the middle. When in strike, Laxman would make batting seem smooth as silk while colleagues played and missed and made the art of batting appear as uncertain as a lottery result.

Once I even ventured to suggest the scene was straight out of the Beauty and the Beast when Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar batted together in Sydney. He made it all seem so easy, which again is the artist who in his felicity hides the difficulty of his art.

In his pomp, Laxman brought to batting an indescribable quality of beauty draped in aesthetic values for all to savour, his on drives possessing that ethereal touch as if they were streaks of colorful lights coming up in some cinematic portrayal of happiness. The sad part is it’s as if Placido Domingo or Yehudi Menuhin decided to retire because some critic was unkind.

It must be our misfortune that he has decided to pack up a bit early, not even taking the opportunity of saying a proper farewell to the international game in a couple of home Tests against the Kiwis. We have to rub our eyes in disbelief that a batsman who was at his best when garnering runs gracefully even when he had only the tail for company, as he did most famously to win a Test against the Aussies on home soil in Mohali just when it all seemed lost, won’t be batting with the India crest on his brave chest.

A proud man has been hurt by the unkind barbs of someone who questioned his batting integrity. That may be a bit like accusing the Pope of bigamy but, sensitive soul that he is, Laxman may have decided this world of deceit and denigration was not for him.