Did Ganguly's India sabotage Laxman's Career?

Laxman's performance graph resembles the population pyramid of Japan.

It has been only recently that the best-batsman-bat-at-4 theory has come to be censured. Tendulkar was easily India's best batsman in the 2000s, and he always got the nod to occupy the easiest batting slot.

The openers always have it tough, negotiating a hard, new ball that could swing both ways, against fresh bowlers; Nos. 5 and 6 face the difficulty of a softer ball which is harder to smother and the risk of running out of partners.

That is why the ability to slog the ball and run hard between the wickets is considered a pre-requisite for batting with the tail. Very often, you are on the lookout for quick runs, perhaps due to an impending declaration or due to an outbreak of wickets.

That is also partly why fresh faces making their debuts are tried out at Nos. 6 and 7. Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Sourav Ganguly, and more recently, Quinton de Kock, are all examples of batsmen who have had prosperous ODI careers but ordinary Test stints, and still found themselves in the XI solely due to these abilities.

VVS Laxman had neither of these. You often found him making the odd run-a-ball innings batting with the tail, but as far as reputation goes, he was certainly not a clean striker of the ball. Nor was he a quick runner between the wickets. And yet, he found himself batting for the major part of his career with the tail, making truckloads of runs at an average of 49.86 across 150 innings at Nos. 5, 6, and 7.

SLOW AND UNFIT: Laxman's running between the wickets had always been a question mark

These arguments are not unsubstantiated. Of his 191 dismissals in Test cricket, 83 (44%) have been caught in the outfield. The next highest mode of dismissal was bowled, which accounted for 20%. As the adage goes, numbers don't lie -- Laxman's natural inability to belt the ball over the ropes is clearly outlined by these stats.

'Laxman's career suffered because of the era he played in.', says Chopra. ' First, he was made to open in Tests, a position he had never batted in during his first-class career. He did well there but at some point, he put his foot down and said that he would rather not play for India than open.

The problem now was that, Nos. 3 and 4 were not available to anyone, thanks to Dravid and Tendulkar. So that's why he was drafted into the middle order. Now with all the skills that he had, he was not an ideal No. 5 or 6 either, and in any case, Ganguly was often No. 5 as well.

'The problem also was that he was purely a Test cricketer and did not really play the other formats. In that situations, your failures tend to get magnified quite a bit but your successes often get forgotten because when there is no Test series for 6 months, people have to jog their memories to come to the conclusion that someone is still in form.

Meanwhile, if another batsman did really well in One-Day cricket, suddenly there was a compelling case to include him in the side, and Laxman became the scapegoat.'

Laxman was dropped from the ODI and Test sides in 2006.

On top of that, he was not a multi-dimensional cricketer. Any slump in batting form could not be compensated for with an exceptional day with the 'keeper gloves, or by turning his arm over to produce a wicket or two out of the blue -- which is precisely what is keeping the likes of Hardik Pandya in the side today.

So it was only natural that he was often shown the door out, to accommodate other utility cricketers (Yuvraj Singh, for instance, happened to be one of them.). Fair to say, out of the other batting certainties in the XI -- Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Gambhir for some time -- it was only the Master himself who could occupy the No. 6 spot.

One would never know what VVS could've done for his team had he batted at the coveted No. 4 spot, which, incidentally, was his batting slot for his domestic side Hyderabad. Conventional thinking, which has proved itself time and again to often backfire, produced the pathological notion that the easiest batting slot was automatically Sachin's, and Laxman through his 134 Test matches for India, batted there on merely 11 instances.

Runs were scored, records galored, and touring teams intimidated at home. But the scapegoat, as ever, remained VVS Laxman.

VVS is all ears for his captain as he walks back to the pavilion after a successful partnership.

That, however, in no way is meant to extenuate the greatness of Tendulkar. The flawed postulate which holds the best batsman of the side as most favoured to bat at No. 4, is fundamentally damaging.

It happened with VVS, and it will continue to happen with many others. Developments such as Joe Root's move to No. 3 to accommodate the ilk of Gary Ballance at No. 4 is heartening to see. The day international cricket moves on from the established, uncontradicted norms that plague Test cricket, it would have taken its biggest, grandest leap.

But as for VVS Laxman, he will always remain a legend, and be remembered up till eternity on the back of that one innings of 281 -- for what he did in 2001, was bringing back energy into depleted stands, barren maidaans, and the closed hearts of a billion cricket fans. VVS Laxman's praise shall still find room, even in the eyes of all posterity.