The Achievement of Style
It is always a pleasure to read Mukul Kesavan on cricket. Here he reports from the ongoing India-Pakistan match at Delhi’s Feroze Shah Kotla ground, speaking up once again not only on behalf of the ever-elegant play of V.V.S. Laxman but also the more discriminating demands of Test cricket. What I particularly relish is the way in which Mukul places the pure sound of the willow hitting the ball against the more guttural accents of Delhi’s dhaba culture.
Yuvraj strolled into the arena occasionally in his capacity as twelfth man or something. Each time that happened lots of people rushed to the front of the stand and peered down and screamed “Yuvi!” The man in front of me, who stood and obscured the action whenever a shot was played (he’d leap to his feet, adjust himself and press his cell phone to his ear in practiced sequence) complained to his seated friend about Yuvraj’s exclusion. Not playing him in Delhi—saalon nein Dilli mein nahin khilaya—seemed to aggravate the injustice done him. I began to feel like an Arsenal fan marooned among Man U maniacs. Yahoos for Yuvraj to the left of me, Lumpen against Laxman behind me. Unwilling to watch VVS make his magic among these brutes, I left the stadium when Tendulkar ran himself out and found myself a sympathetic television set.
The rest, I hope, will be history. Laxman came in when the score was 88 for 4 and inspite of losing Dravid on 93 and Dhoni at 208, he steered India to within a boundary of the Pakistan total by close of play. He was, as he often is in Test matches, the best batsman on show. It is absurd that he bats at six. Kumble has done nearly everything right in his debut as captain. Before the match began he was forthright in his endorsement of Laxman as an automatic selection for the Test team. Now that VVS has vindicated his judgment, the skipper should promote him to five in the batting order, ahead of Ganguly. Number three would be better, but down here in the VVS dugout, we aren’t in a hurry. Test cricket’s our game: we’re used to taking things one day at a time.
