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A special feature by Tushar Jha
 He
is a magician when in full flow. We all know
that. But we also know a thing or two about the
One Day game and our 'Magician' just
doesn’t seem to fit onto its scheme of
things. The world cried foul when Dinesh Mongia
was preferred to V.V.S.Laxman for the World
Cup barely a year back. Life has turned a full
circle for both these players (Mongia is in
tremendous form in the County circuit); the
opposite sentiment seems to be making rounds
these days.
What is the problem? One may ask. If this guy can be a
thorn in the flesh of the best team in the world
(both in ODI and Tests), he definitely must be
the first choice No 3 for us. Yeah, right. That
golden 2-3 week period, during which he amassed
3-4 Hundreds in Australia still seems good
enough to buy him a ticket in the One Day 11.
But, it’s high time we realized the demands of
the ODI game and strive to be competitive and
take a look at the Aussies.
The Aussies have been instrumental in revolutionizing the
game in a lot of aspects. From eviscerating the
'Draw' concept in the test matches to the basic
idea of having "Academies" for the
nurturing of their youngsters, they have been
Harbingers in almost every modern day practice,
which has professionalized the game no end.
Let’s consider one of them. The
clear differentiation of the two forms of the
game (ODI and Tests). In the Australianized era of
today, a 'good' player is not always good enough
for all purposes.
From Taylor and Slater, to now Langer. All were
superb in the longer version, but did not shine
too brightly in the ODI format. As, with the
case with Langer he seems to have benefited from
playing only tests ( perhaps allowing him to
model his game as required in the 5 day format).
As much as the pundits argue that Laxman is too good a
player to be dropped in the ODIs, we will have
to look at his utility in the Indian line up. At
No 3, where most teams have a dynamic batsman
whose main objective is to keep the scoreboard
moving (either by attack or defense which
obviously means taking singles), Laxman seems to
be a definite misfit. His weakness in running
between the wickets is conspicuous. On quite a
few occasions he has been guilty of
enervating the whole situation by slowing the
innings' run rate down because of his clear
inability to pinch the singles, which is
sacrilege today. The ‘tempo’ has to be
maintained at all costs and Laxman knows only
one way of doing it i.e. through his crisply
timed boundaries, which is always not possible
in the ODIs where for most part of the innings
there are boundary riders almost throughout the
ground unlike in the Tests where its mostly
about piercing the infield.
Rahul Dravid in his early days as an ODI
player was much the same , but he soon picked up the gauntlet and worked on his One Day credentials
making up for his inability to hit the big shots
by working on his fitness and his running
between the wickets. Not so Laxman. Now, considering his fielding. His superb slip catching
notwithstanding, he is laden footed to say the
least elsewhere. Bottom line is there is a
definite minus for the Indian team by
having Laxman at No 3. For his part Laxman
is a great batsman but we shouldn’t get
carried away by his artistry and consider the
One Day game a little more pragmatically. If we
can ‘Bevanise’ Kaif why cant we
‘Langerise’ Laxman??
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