VVS Laxman, perennially the most disposable man among the Indian batting heavyweights, has an axe hanging over his head. If he is worried, he didn’t show it in the nets

Sidharth Monga in Perth11-Jan-2012Empty stadiums give a rare insight into how VVS Laxman approaches the game. It is 600 for 5, India are in the field, everybody looks tired, only one man is diving around (Suresh Raina or Virat Kohli), and only one man is audible: Laxman. It is not obvious when the ground is full. In empty stadiums you hear only Laxman. Clapping away, oohing and aahing, usually from short cover or short midwicket. Laxman is an immensely positive man. Laxman keeps the team going at such times.It’s 600 for 5 for Laxman the batsman now. He has gone 12 straight overseas innings without making a big impact. There have been three fifties, there have been spells when he has looked really good, but there hasn’t been that big innings. India have lost all the six matches. Kapil Dev, Sanjay Manjrekar, Kiran More and Anshuman Gaekwad have asked India to look forward. To lose with younger players, if they have to keep losing. To start phasing out the big three batsmen – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Laxman. That only means one thing: Laxman, perennially the most disposable man among the Indian batting heavyweights, has an axe hanging over his head.Laxman is no stranger to this. He has known that feeling too well. Probably not since Anil Kumble, and then MS Dhoni, took over the captaincy 2007-08 onwards, but Laxman has enough experience of being here. Looking at it empirically, Laxman has had one ordinary year since the start of the period when he was made to feel secure in the side. He played three magical innings in the year before that, innings that variously tested his technique, his ability to bat under pressure, or in pain. Sport doesn’t care about two years ago, we are told. But Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting have been through such spells. They have been allowed rope. They have all come back.Not that there is no merit to what those calling for Laxman’s head have to say. He is 37 to begin with. He has never been a man of great run-scoring months, rather a man of great innings when the team is under the pump. India, though, have been under the pump a little too often of late, and that innings hasn’t come from Laxman. He hasn’t looked woeful except for the MCG Test. At Lord’s and at Trent Bridge he actually looked in good touch. Is it a sign of age, of reducing endurance, that he has not carried on when he has looked good?Speaking of his own lean phase in 2007 and 2008, Rahul Dravid talked of the “brownie points” he had accumulated over the last few years, and how he felt he was running out of them. Are Laxman’s brownie points running out here? Opinion is divided on that, but the voices outside now want India to start looking to the future. To not swap a youngster for a youngster, but to allow Virat Kohli a longer run and bring Rohit Sharma in for Laxman. It is just that in the case of Laxman the voices are stronger and nearly unified.

Laxman has never been a man of great run-scoring months, rather a man of great innings when the team is under the pump. India, though, have been under the pump a little too often of late, and that innings hasn’t come from Laxman. Is it a sign of age, of reducing endurance, that he has not carried on when he has looked good?

It is questionable, too, as to how wise such a phasing out will be when done in a state of panic and during a series that is still alive. Here is a batsman who is capable of great deeds, who has not looked completely out of touch, and who plays his best cricket when made to feel secure. Do you really want to drop him in the middle of a series? The Indian team doesn’t.”I don’t think it has affected Laxman too much,” Dravid said two days before the WACA Test. “To be honest, I have been with him last two days – I haven’t read some of these comments – and I don’t think Lax is bothered either. We have been around a long time. We have learned to accept this as part and parcel of the job, of what we do.”If you are going to keep playing and if you are going to put yourself up for criticism, then you have got to accept it. Personally – I know Lax – he is a pretty relaxed character. He is not going to get bothered. He is a top-class performer. I am backing him to really come good in one of these two Test matches.”At the risk of reading too much into the body language of players in the nets, if Laxman is worried he didn’t show it. If at all, he looked really positive. He kept slog-sweeping or going inside-out against the spinners. Against fast bowlers he was more circumspect.Then he had a long conversation with Sachin Tendulkar who stood by in the adjacent net as Laxman batted. Tendulkar has been working with Laxman throughout the tour, trying to get him to move forward to guard against the kind of delivery that has been getting him bowled. James Anderson did it, Tim Bresnan did it, and now Ben Hilfenhaus has done it. It is a difficult delivery to negotiate. It pitches short of a driving length, on and around off, making him play the line, and then leaves him enough to beat the bat and hit the off stump. At the MCG Laxman even had a long session with the bowling machine, against shortish fast deliveries swerving away.After the session with Tendulkar, Laxman moved on to joke with Zaheer Khan about his new hairstyle. Then he laughed loudly, and he and Zaheer told physio Evan Speechly an elaborate joke. They laughed loudly again. As he walked back to the change room, he saw a fan behind pushed away. He stopped, called the fan back, signed his shirt, and posed for a photo with him. It is 600 for 5, the stadium is getting empty, but Laxman is the most audible man right now.