Steve Waugh: the lost frontier and after

DURING THE Coronation season, as England wrested back its most valued rubber (1-0) from Australia in the summer of 1953, Jack Fingleton came up with the book classically titled: `The Ashes Crown The Year'. It was on a similar high note that Steve Waugh had vain gloriously aimed to end his illustrious innings as Australia's Test captain. Now the Australian team for the 2001 five-Test Ashes series in England has been announced. But only after Sourav Ganguly's India broke Steve Waugh's dream run by turning `The Last Frontier' into `The Lost Frontier'! It was Aussie-bashing in which not only `Kiwinsome' coach John Wright rejoiced. `A Typhoon Called Tyson' also took (in print) some pot- shots at Old Enemy Australia. Frank Tyson's book of the above whirlwind title comes vividly to mind as the Kangaroos lick their 2-1 Test wounds - inflicted by an Eden-rejuvenated India.

Frank Tyson's 1954-55 breakthrough figures of 13-2-45-4 and 18.4- 1-85-6 in the second Sydney Test. Then 21-2-68-2 and 12.3-1-27-7 in the third Melbourne Test. Next, 26.1-4-85-3 and 15-2-47-3 in the fourth Adelaide Test saw this superfast (151-16-583-28 - 20.82 per wicket) destroy Australia 3-1 - in alliance with Brian Statham (143.3-16-499-18 - 27.72 per wicket) - the exact way the Ray Lindwall-Keith Miller twosome had terrorised England in the post-war period. I was at the London press conference as Len Hutton, sensationally, became England's first professional captain. To a question about how he saw the countdown to the Ashes developing, Len Hutton came back in typical Yorkshire fashion: ``I see no reason why England should not win all five Tests against Australia!''

That did not immediately come about, of course, Len Hutton's England won but 1-0 the series against Lindsay Hassett's Australia during 1953. But that 1-0 rubber was the precursor to `A Typhoon Called Tyson' happening - in Australia, come 1954-55. Fresher Frank Tyson, with his electric pace, came to represent a lasting wound in Australia's cricketing psyche. Just as Harbhajan Singh's snarling spin now (an Indian record 32 wickets at 17.03 runs, each, for a three-Test series) hit Australia where it hurt most.

Steve Waugh has since admitted: ``The (3-2) one-day win does not make up for our (1-2) defeat in the Test series.'' Steve Waugh, in fact, has pinpointed V. V. S. Laxman's Eden 281 as the knock that paved the path for the amazing see-sawing of the series. Steve's brother Mark has gone a step further by `Waugh Zone' noting: ``Laxman's 281 was the best innings I have ever seen played against Australia. It is now being spoken of as one of the all-time great innings by brother Steve - and he knows a thing or two about batting under pressure. I cannot recall a better innings, especially since Laxman was probably playing against the three best bowlers in the world - Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Jason Gillespie. I have seen Brian Lara's 277 in Sydney, but this knock was played under tougher circumstances and was absolutely faultless.''

In the same Sydney Test setting in which Brian Lara sculpted that 277, Venkatasai Laxman (on Tuesday, January 4, 2000) composed 167 (off 198 balls from an Indian total of 258). It was an innings comparable to that of Lara for its bravura. Laxman thus now has, in Australia, a knock to match Sandeep Patil's 174 in the January 1981 Adelaide Test against the quicksilver pace of Dennis Lillee, Rodney Hogg and Len Pascoe. If that Sydney Test 167 (27 fours and a five) remains etched on our mental screen for the flair with which Laxman got after Brett Lee (11-2-67-2), his Eden 281 is keynoteworthy for the style brought to decimating Shane Warne (34-3- 152-1). Dravid's 180 (in the same Eden Test) ranks not far behind Laxman's 281 for the controlled aggression by which Rahul put `Damocles' Warne to the sword. Yet it was Laxman who showed Rahul the jumping-out way. That is why Sachin's 126 in the following Chepauk Test, priceless as it was in sealing the rubber 2-1, is not spoken of in the same breath, by the Aussies, as Laxman's Eden 281.

This Laxman 281, in fact, has now become the touchstone by which to `Test' any innings played for India. For, if Laxman's Sydney Test 167 showed him to be a rough diamond, a polished gem has he emerged after `Eden 281'. When Sachin hits the ball, it stays hit. When Laxman caresses the red cherry, it stays caressed. The danger of a Naghma's coming along, asking to be caressed, is now very much there in Urdu-oriented Hyderabad! This is a crease- occupational hazard, in 2001, as far as cricket superstars go. How far he wants to go is something for the `single'-minded Laxman himself now to determine. V.V.S. has already got to the art and heart of the matter by observing how the first 100 is for the batsman's personal satisfaction - how, after that, the player begins to think in terms of enlarging that individual score to a multiple ton calculated really to help the team.

The point about the lissom Laxman is that, once he gets to 100, he has the mind-frame not to need to stop at 167, even at 281. Laxman on that fifth and final Eden Test morning, fatigued as he was by the bat-in- hand 275 feat, clearly lost the momentum needed to carry his knock to 300. Here we come to the pith of the written counsel forthcoming from Clive Lloyd vis-a-vis Navjyot Singh Sidhu. Lloyd talked of how Sidhu, even after being fairly seasoned, just went bang-bang. There comes a stage in an innings (as Lloyd pointed out) when the batsman must pause to get ``his second wind''. It is this ``second wind'' Laxman must consistently summon, if he aims to sustain the potential for greatness he has showcased as a shot-maker to the aristocratic Azhar manner born.

I say this because, in the face of his abiding stroke production in the one-day series now (45, 51, 83, 11 and 101, compared to his 2, 2 and 3 - after being specially invited to stay on in Australia in the wake of that 167 on January 4, 2000), I nurse this impression that Laxman has the gift of being swiftly bored by whatever he is accomplishing. Let it be a fresh series - even in minnowy Zimbabwe - and I am not totally confident that Laxman would carry on from where he left off at Chennai (65 and 66) and Goa (101). Where Sachin's arrogance is his undoing, Laxman's elegance could be his unmaking. It was his lazy elegance that made Laxman play into Ricky Ponting's hands in the slip cordon (off Glenn McGrath) when set (with 20) for a big score in creative association with Sachin (ultimately 76 in a lone hand) on the opening day, in Mumbai, of the now celebrated Test series. The nub of Laxman's problem, in the years to come, is going to be to fetter his own talent in his quest for quality at the highest level of the game.

The 26-year-old Laxman's rise is remarkable because it is not just Rahul (now past 28) and Sourav (nearing 29) that this willowy virtuoso has made feel challenged. Laxman has got even Sachin to discern that Tendulkar, as he turns 28 on Tuesday, is not necessarily the Little Master of the situation. The kind of healthy counter that G. R. Visvanath was to Sunil Gavaskar, Laxman now is to Sachin. For Laxman, like Sachin, commands the ammunition to destroy an international attack. Wallaroo Warne had a headache enough in Sachin. When Laxman joined Sachin, Warne just did not know which turn of the wrist to employ - as Rahul (180), too, chose to join in the fun.

Why do we, after Eden, still talk of Laxman first, even Harbhajan after? Because, as Keith Miller pointed out: `` It's the batsmen who get remembered in this game!'' Even Steve Waugh takes the name of Laxman first. Because everything preceding, at Mumbai and even at Kolkata, had suggested that 274 runs' lead to be enough. Until Laxman honed his blade, on a different whetstone altogether, with 275 not out. This was the superstar-turn at which the rousing rally in Indian cricket began. Sans that 281 from Laxman, there would have been no Australia to bowl out, a second time, for Harbhajan Singh at Eden. Harbhajan had struck tellingly in the Mumbai Test too, as India had Australia reeling at 99 for 4. Only for Sourav to identify Adam Gilchrist's 122 as ``one of Test cricket's great innings to which India lost out.''

By the same token was Laxman's 281 one of Test cricket's greatest innings to which Australia lost out at Eden. And that is why Steve Waugh fleshes out Laxman's Eden 281 as turning the series on its head. Until Laxman blossomed with 59 and 281 at Eden, Steve Waugh had looked upon India as a mere irritant in fulfilling his long-term goal of rounding off his `greying' career with the Ashes in England. Nothing that happened (up to that midway Eden stage) had hinted that India was anything but a piece of cake. After that 10-wicket win in the Wankhede Stadium Test and the follow-on so imperially imposed upon Sourav's India at Eden, Steve Waugh's Australia smugly looked forward to taking the Qantas flight to England with 18 successive Test wins under its seat-belt.

This seat-belt Laxman first had Australia loosening with that 59 at Eden. And there was to be only loosening, and loosening, of the seat- belt after that! The style in which Laxman came to belt that 281 left all Australia tongue-tied. As the Aussie captain's tongue lost its sting in the barbs he directed at Sourav, Laxman had blown to smithereens Steve Waugh's Utopia of bidding for the Ashes from an unprecedented 18-nil position of strength.

All the weaknesses of Australia, as an ageing team, came suddenly to the fore! Now Nasser Hussein's England, like Sourav Ganguly's India, know that Steve Waugh's Australia can be beaten.

No Kangaroom for doubt there, following the panache that Laxman imparted to galvanising our cricket - against an opponent looking Eden-set to bring Sourav's India under the `sledge' hammer.

RAJU BHARATAN

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