VVS Laxman and the Eden Gardens ‘miracle’ of 2001

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THE story of Indian batsman VVS Laxman’s career is an uneven one. At his best — his very best — the wristy, supple stroke playing at his disposal was otherworldly, as pure and seemingly effortless as any of his celebrated peers. In fallow periods he faced questions over his worth in the side, and spent periods on the outer.

 

Yet for all the inconsistencies of his performances, few men can lay claim to have constructed a single innings of such significance as he did at Eden Gardens in 2001. Men have batted longer and compiled higher scores. Others have won matches single-handedly. But it is no exaggeration to say that when Laxman left the field on the fifth day of a breathless, implausible Test in Kolkata, its impact was already rippling across continents and the ages.

That his most thrilling knock was against Australia should come as little surprise. By the time he called stumps in 2012, six of his 17 Test centuries had been plundered against them. He reserved his best for the best in a time when Steve Waugh’s all-conquering team were bestriding the cricketing world as colossi.

That side of Waugh, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Matthew Hayden, Michael Slater, Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting arrived in India off the back of a world record 15 straight Test wins. Which quickly became 16 after a three day Test ended in an innings victory for the tourists in Mumbai.

Waugh had famously talked pre-series of victory in India as the ‘final frontier’. It looked in the early part of the tour like it was to be conquered in the same devastating fashion as Australian players and fans had become so thrillingly accustomed elsewhere.

Having won the toss and elected to bat, Waugh watched on as openers Slater and Hayden went about their business in their usual no nonsense style, a 103 partnership for the opening wicket laying what at the time looked a rock solid foundation. India rallied in the final session of the first day, with Harbhajan Singh bagging a celebrated hat-trick of Ponting, Gilchrist and Warne, the standout feature of a mini-Australian collapse.

Normal service was resumed, however, on the morning of day two. The precarious position of 8/291 transformed in to what looked a potentially match winning 445 all out once Waugh, given commendable support by Jason Gillespie and McGrath, had posted his 25th Test century.

With runs to play with and confidence understandably robust, Australia attacked from the off.

After opener Sadagoppan Ramesh edged Gillespie to Ponting in a busy slip cordon with no run to his name, the hosts showed limited resistance before collapsing from 1/34 to 8/128 at the close of play, with Laxman and Venkatapathy Raju at the crease, still 118 short of the follow on target.

If most observers believed the game was up once India’s first innings was concluded on day three for 171, 274 in arrears, Laxman had perhaps offered a glimpse of what was to come. A fluent 59 was at odds with the showing of his teammates. A calm and even tempered player and man, as those around him had lost their heads as well as their wickets, he had kept his more protected than most.

It would be wrong to characterise him as an unknown quantity. But in truth there was an element of a talent unfulfilled to this point of his career, despite a stunning century posted in a losing cause at the SCG to his name. That was to date his lone century from 35 innings in 20 Tests, for the most part as an uncomfortable and unwilling opener. The elegance and velvet brutality of that 167 had left a mark on his opponents. And yet he only averaged a fraction over 27. There was more to come. Much more. And soon, as it turned out.

Laxman’s disquiet at his notional role as an opener had come to a head when dropped for a series against South Africa. His return to the side at six seemed a better fit. But, with his position still to be set in concrete, and with his success against Warne and McGrath in the first innings at Eden Gardens evident to all in the storeyed old ground, a decision was taken that was to dramatically alter the match, and subsequently how Laxman and Indian cricket was viewed from both within and without.

Promoted up the order to three, swapping places with Rahul Dravid, Laxman was back out in the middle swiftly after the follow on was enforced.

That decision has been debated and analysed to a length in stark contrast to the short time it was considered and taken. Though it should be noted that, at the time, it was far from controversial. Review after the fact distorts. Especially when picked apart and knocked around the clubs and bars and commentary boxes so often as to leave it bruised and broken.

“Hindsight will tell you that it was possibly the wrong decision but it’s a tough one,” says Jason Gillespie, who as a pace bowler toiling in the heat of an Indian summer on a deck that offered little for the quicks had more reason that most to have lobbied for a rest.

“The bowlers were still pretty fresh and if Steve Waugh hadn’t enforced the follow on he probably would have been criticised, too. History was on our side. For a team to win having been forced to follow on doesn’t happen very often.”

Only twice previously, in fact. And there was little unrest at the time. Warne has repeated the line that he had implored his captain to make the Indians bowl. And been a vocal critic of the decision ever since. We must take him on his word, though an ongoing feud between the two men has risked clouding the bowling legend’s reliability as a witness to the prevailing mood on the field.

“Everyone will tell you now that Steve Waugh made the wrong decision [to follow on],” recalls the Courier Mail’s Robert Craddock, a respected reporter and analyst of the game. “I was in the press box and did not hear one dissenting voice. Only two teams had been beaten after enforcing the follow on and none of us thought it was even a 100-1 chance for it to happen again.

“After that, though, it’s 16 years later and the stigma remains. Every Australian captain is haunted by what happened in Kolkata. So in that regard it changed the way Australia played cricket, and it certainly changed the way India played cricket, too.”

Right or wrong, the intention was clear. Australia had their foot on the throat of an opponent in their own back yard and Waugh sensed blood. A repeat of the bowling excellence of one of the finest attacks ever assembled in the game would run through demoralised batsmen and post a victory to garnish the world’s best team, elevate them to the greatest ever, even.

But it did not turn out like that.

After the Indian openers had gone past 50, Laxman came to the crease and picked up where he had left off. A serene calmness about him, he found runs easy to come by. Others initially lacked his levels of concentration, even Sachin Tendulkar departing for little impact. But once he was joined by Sourav Ganguly a step change occurred.

McGrath and Gillespie were bowling well. But Laxman was simply batting better, the tourists’ plans impotent as an innings of substance began to reveal itself.

“Laxman was strong playing off his stumps to the leg side with those wristy flicks,” remembers Gillespie. “We wanted to try and make him play positively off the front foot more. But it just didn’t work.”

The off-side was stacked and a wide line bowled. Laxman simply picked the narrowest of gaps and found the boundary with a frustrating ease. Anything straight went the other way with that flick of the wrists. He was a man in complete control of his game.

“We gave it our best but sometimes you have to take your hat off and admit he was too good for us that day,” admits Gillespie. “It was something special … we had no answer for him.”

If the quicks were being punished, Warne was being crucified. Bowling round the wicket in to some generous footmarks, the greatest spinner of all time watched aghast as Laxman treated identical deliveries with equal disdain but with a breathtaking variety of shots, sending decent balls through cover one time; whipping it through midwicket the next.

Coming down the track and hitting Warne inside-out took bravery as well as unquestioned belief in one’s ability. Yet Laxman, in a match situation that possibly urged defensive pragmatism rather than extravagant shot making, did so time and again with ruthless effect.

“There are a few players who tried to play shots like that, but if they tried it twice or thrice I generally got them out,” remembered Warne in an interview last year.

“The key was how consistently well he did it — inside-out or through midwicket against the spin on a track that was turning big. And I was actually bowling well!”

Warne’s 34 overs went for 152, most off the bat of Laxman, who stood tall when Ganguly departed for 48 before going past three figures in the company of Dravid, who initially scratched around for personal form as his partner unfurled shot after exquisite shot at the other end.

Day three ended with India 4/252 and Laxman unbeaten on 109. For all the beauty of the knock, however, the hosts still trailed by 20 runs and it looked for all the world like an act of glorious defiance rather than complete recovery. Surely another individual innings of substance in a losing cause, as in Sydney.

 

Fresh hell arrived for Australia’s bowlers, however, with the dawn of a new day. Laxman and Dravid batted out the entire fourth day without offering a single chance worthy of the description. Three sessions of error free concentration in which the runs flowed like a broken damn. Finding the boundary at a rate of once every 10 balls faced across the three sessions, Laxman’s consistent, unrelenting ability to find gaps and treat good deliveries as if they were long hops was as wondrous for the home side as it was spirit breaking for Australia.

Dravid, too, had found his absent form, feeding off the energy of his partner. When he went past three figures he celebrated with a gusto unusual for a reserved and quiet man, saluting his team-mates in the shed, the delirious fans and, pointedly, the press box. Stung by recent criticism of his poor form, the opportunity to remind his critics of his class was not wasted.

It is difficult to overplay the complete mastery of Australia’s willing but broken attack. Laxman’s double century when it arrived had contained 44 fours. Stumps were called with India now in a position of dominance, 4/589 and with a lead of 315. Eden Gardens became a broiling cauldron. History was being made before the eyes of a giddy packed crowd.

“Indian crowds are always noisy and back their team,” remembers Gillespie of an atmosphere that had morphed from subdued resignation to carnival. “They definitely got the sense they were seeing something special.”

They were. Australia floundered under the assault from Laxman and a rejuvenated Dravid. With plans A, B and C exhausted, Waugh began tossing the cherry around the team looking for a new question for Laxman to answer. No fewer than nine different men had a bowl at the iron cast partnership on that day of destruction against a team used to having things their own way. None came close to prospering.

“I think Hayden had a bowl we were getting that desperate,” recalls Gillespie, correctly.

It was off the bowling of Hayden, in fact, that Laxman went past the 236 set by Sunil Gavaskar against West Indies at Chennai in 1983, at that time the highest individual Test score by an Indian. The grandstands vibrated to such an extent there was concern over their structural integrity.

The foundations were given further examination when Dravid (180) and Laxman (281) left the middle early on the final day, having put on a stand of 376 that had dug India out of a deep hole and then shoved Australia in to a deeper one still.

Australia fought gamely to save the match, Slater and Hayden again standing up to see the tourists to 3/166 with 30 overs left in the match. But when Harbhajan took the scalps of Waugh and Ponting it paved the way for India to complete the most improbable of 171 run victories, and with it adding deserved team value to the individual efforts of Laxman and, to a lesser extent, Dravid.

“It was quite simply one of the greatest innings the game’s seen,” says Craddock. “The context around it just enhances its merit.

“And as Laxman himself said, it changed the way the world looked at India. Suddenly they were a force in Test cricket, they could conjure a miracle — and it was a miracle.

“I can still remember the Indian team leaving the ground like rock stars, people climbing over the bus trying to get their hands in the window.

“It was if a match played on a cloud and the fact we’re still talking about it all these years later, proves it was one of the truly epic events in cricket history.

“The game just turned mad and even Steve Waugh could rejoiced at what had just happened, even though Australia lost. He said: ‘It’s a sorrowful game for Australia, but what a game for cricket.”’

The theme is a consistent one through the side who ended up on the wrong side of the result. Often after defeat injustice burns and self-recrimination festers. Not here. Great players are also great students and lovers of the sport. Australia’s incredible winning run had ended, but in a fashion that brokered no shame or embarrassment.

“Back in the dressing room you analyse the game and think about what you could have done differently,” says Gillespie. “But the scoreboard didn’t lie. We were outplayed and there’s no shame in that, especially when you’ve given it your all, which we did. Laxman’s knock was one of the greatest I ever faced in Tests.”

Where Laxman’s feat stands on an individual’s reckoning of greatness will vary depending on who is having the debate. And ultimately it doesn’t matter what ranking you give it. Brian Lara’s unbeaten 153 against Australia two years earlier in Barbados was a chase for the ages, like Laxman taking it upon himself to turn imminent defeat in to unexpected victory. Ian Botham’s Headingley heroics in 1981, likewise, stands as testament to never conceding any position is a losing one.

And, for Australians, Don Bradman’s 254 against England at Lord’s in 1930 is consistently hailed as the finest example of an individual taking the game to an almost supernatural level. Stan McCabe’s fearless 232 at Trent Bridge in 1938 took the fight to the English and won when all seemed lost. And more recently, Dean Jones’ 210 in the tied Test in Chennai in 1986 saw a man put his body on the line for the cause over eight hours of extraordinary work in exhausting heat.

Others will enjoy their favourite moment of individual brilliance in the company of Ponting, Viv Richards, Tendulkar, even Kevin Pietersen.

Yet the majesty of Laxman’s innings, named the greatest of the decade in a recent poll, continues to dazzle with each repeat viewing. The match position, his own lack of security in the side and the strength of the opposition make it a complete individual performance that few, if any, can rival.

But the real glory came in the twin deployment of violence and grace, the brutal command of arguably the best ever bowling attack assembled executed with the precision of a surgeon’s knife.

At his best — at his very best — Laxman was simply a joy and a privilege to watch. Even, as Waugh graciously conceded, for a defeated foe.

 

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/cricket/the-greatest-ever-knock-vvs-laxmans-harvest-of-runs-at-eden-garden/news-story/535126ece71f724c3ba97a52fb9062e9#load-story-comments

 

Amazing article just reading that gives me goosebumps.

[mancalledsting]

Best test match innings of all time IMO

 

Very difficult wicket to bat on 

against one of greatest teams of all time at their peak 

immense pressure of playing in Eden gardens 

[tweaker]

One of the greatest inning ever played in test

[maniac]

Greatest innings of all time.....greatest game of all time...probably singlehandedly resurrected interest in Indian cricket after the match fixing scandal.

[nevada]

An epic match which was like a movie  with an improbable story. A rare occassion where dreams and reality become one. 

[Mosher]

I still remember me and my friends ran out on the streets celebrating in Bangalore after we won. One of the greatest innings of all time and easily the best test match I have ever seen.

[maniac]

And just when people bring out 0 contribution from Sachin in one of our greatest wins, his wickets in the 2nd innings is what sealed the deal. Hall mark of a champion,can't just keep them out of the game....Wickets of Gilchrist,Hayden and Warne

 

[King Tendulkar]

AMazing knock . Amazing win

amazing series 

 

but bhajis Hercules bowling seem sadly to be forgotten by sands of time . Miracle bowling 

[OpeningBatsman]

Still remember watching it on DoorDarshan  They only showed first and last one hour of test matches Live. No cable .... 

[Cricketics]

Best Test Innings of this era.

 

There is no better test innings played. The knock had impact on not only the game, but on the series result. 

 

Infact, that innings changed the way captains want to move the game now. The knock has changed test cricket forever in the way that captains look to win test matches now without pushing for the follow-on. Captains actually get puzzled and are too scared to push for it. VVS' knock still has so much impact on the game.

 

281 is one for the ages.

 

 

 

[Sidhoni]

1 hour ago, maniac said:

And just when people bring out 0 contribution from Sachin in one of our greatest wins, his wickets in the 2nd innings is what sealed the deal. Hall mark of a champion,can't just keep them out of the game....Wickets of Gilchrist,Hayden and Warne

 

With some help from umpire

[Sidhoni]

1 hour ago, OpeningBatsman said:

Still remember watching it on DoorDarshan  They only showed first and last one hour of test matches Live. No cable .... 

They don't even do that much now.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Sidhoni

[maniac]

8 minutes ago, Sidhoni said:

With some help from umpire

 remember the quote Dhoni fans behave like Pakistanis.....wonder why you got so offended by it.

 

So our greatest ever test win is now marred by poor umpiring bravo!!!

[Sidhoni]

2 minutes ago, maniac said:

 remember the quote Dhoni fans behave like Pakistanis.....wonder why you got so offended by it.

 

So our greatest ever test win is now marred by poor umpiring bravo!!!

You should try applying for India TV or some news channel like that.

 

I don't want to derail this thread celebrating our greatest ever test innings.

 

You have anyway run away from the other thread at the first sight of logic.

[Laaloo]

4 minutes ago, maniac said:

 remember the quote Dhoni fans behave like Pakistanis.....wonder why you got so offended by it.

 

So our greatest ever test win is now marred by poor umpiring bravo!!!

Maybe he is confusing it with Harbhajan hat trick.

 

P.S. Maniac, let him be. He wasn't even born when this match was played.

[flat_wicket_bully]

2 hours ago, OpeningBatsman said:

Still remember watching it on DoorDarshan  They only showed first and last one hour of test matches Live. No cable .... 

Lol. That's how I watched that match too.

As others have its one of the greatest innings ever played. I still get goosebumps when I see the highlights of him playing that on drive against the spin against warne 

Edited February 22, 2017 by atishvaze

[OpeningBatsman]

1 hour ago, Sidhoni said:

They don't even do that much now.

[OpeningBatsman]

1 hour ago, atishvaze said:

Lol. That's how I watched that match too.

As others have its one of the greatest innings ever played. I still get goosebumps when I see the highlights of him playing that on drive against the spin against warne 

Yes,  unmatched batting against spin. Not to forget the great wall. 

[Cricketics]

44 minutes ago, Viper said:

Legend... along with Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag

 

Real fab 4 

 

He always had something against Aussies...  Lee once said if you get Laxman out its a miracle. I feel he was always underrated.. Deserves more credits complete Team man like Dravid

 

 

How is Ganguly there and Sachin not when Sachin scored more runs than anyone against Australia?

[MCcricket]

This was simply the best innings I have seen but even Virats effort was superlative on his first test as captain, when Dhoni chickened out.