Finessing Laxman

Now that every Indian batsman lucky enough to be picked looks likely to score a century against Bangladesh, this is a good time to look at the considerations behind Indias five batsmen policy in the long term. The point of only five batsmen is more bowling options. Despite the matchless Adam Gilchrist, Australia traditionally play six batsmen, a keeper and four bowlers. One of the batsmen (Michael Bevan, Andrew Symonds, Mark Waugh) has generally doubled up as an auxiliary bowler. Dravid has been pushing the idea of five bowlers for a while, though it isn't clear that India has five bowlers penetrative enough to back up the policy. Anil Kumble, an in-form Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, an un-injured Munaf Patel and Sreesanth might (just) justify their places but Harbhajan is in decline and Munaf Patel keeps breaking down. Irfan Pathan swinging the ball and shoring up the lower order would be perfect, but Greg Chappell, with his gift for turning gold into lead, did for him.

In Bangladesh the five-bowler experiment is relatively risk-free. On slow pitches Bangladesh's seamers aren't a threat and Indian Test batsmen aren't likely to be troubled by poor-to-middling left arm spin. I can't see us playing five batsmen against England in England this summer or even at home against the Pakistanis later this year so the best thing you can say about the policy is that it's Bangladesh-specific. But you have to experiment somewhere if five bowlers is what you favour so perhaps Bangladesh is Dravid's laboratory.

The trouble is that Dravid's experiment, even if it succeeds (i.e. we beat Bangladesh), is so poorly set up that it has no lessons for the future. And the problem isn't the five bowlers, it's the five batsmen he's decided to go with.

Mohinder Amarnath wrote a piece recently where he argued that it was a mistake to pick two wicket-keepers (Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik) in the playing eleven. I don't think that's where the problem lies. I'm old enough to remember the time India played both Farokh Engineer and Budhi Kunderan. Kunderan played as a batsman and he was picked for the same reason that Karthik is: he showed promise as an opener, a position India has always had trouble filling. Karthik has scored runs every time he's been given an opportunity and I don't think it's a good idea to unsettle the team's best batsman, Dravid, by making him open.

No, the reason this experiment is meaningless is that Dravid and Ravi Shastri have picked Sourav Ganguly over VVS Laxman. If India were to play six batsmen, Ganguly walks into the team. He has made a brave return to the Indian team in both forms of the game and he deserves his place at number six. As a Test batsman Ganguly is still twice the player Yuvraj will ever be. But in a line up of five, after Karthik, Wasim Jaffer, Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, surely the fifth has to be Laxman. His recent form in Test matches, his overall record, his average, his ability against fast bowling are all superior to Ganguly's. Were we to play Australia or England or South Africa on quick pitches I can't see anyone rooting for Ganguly over Laxman and if it's Bangladesh and slow bowlers we're talking about, nobody sane is going to argue that Laxman is less than masterful against spin. Or that Ganguly is immeasurably the better fielder. I could argue the reverse: Laxman is a fine slip catcher.

So why did Ganguly get the nod over Laxman? It doesn't seem to be on account of the 'process' that Dravid was once so keen on. If 'process' is shorthand for a rational long haul strategy systematically implemented regardless of short term setbacks, the dropping of Laxman seems the very opposite of process: it seems an example of how expediency trumps merit and reason in Indian cricket, it seems, in short, a political decision.

It seems a political decision forced upon the team management by its complicity in the selectors' decision to 'rest' Ganguly (along with Tendulkar) from the one-day games against Bangladesh. My guess about the reasoning behind Laxman's exclusion goes like this: World Cup gossip, a television sting operation and the rumours about Dravid's difficulties with senior players made it clear to everyone that they were being punished for having been recalcitrant, awkward and subversive of the captain's authority. In this context dropping Ganguly from the Bangladesh Tests would have seemed like vendetta so the tour management dropped Laxman instead.

Ganguly, with composure and courage, compiled a century in the Chittagong Test which meant that Laxman was benched for the Bangladesh Test series. So if Dravid is serious about a five batsman team in the long run, the current series has entrenched a batsman who is dodgy against the short ball at the expense of perhaps the best player of fast bowling in the Indian team. If he isn't, if the five-batsman strategy is designed for the sub-continent's slow pitches, then he needs to explain to us (and perhaps to his erstwhile team mate, Laxman) why the batsman the team turns to in difficult conditions, is denied the opportunity to consolidate his place in the Indian side and fill his boots in easier ones?

Dravid has form in the business of dropping Laxman from the side. He has chosen Yuvraj over Laxman in a home series during Chappell's regime as coach which, in Test match terms, is close to sacrilege. But to drop Laxman (and remember that Laxman was vice-captain in the last Test series we played in South Africa) because it was inexpedient to drop Ganguly is worse because it seems to indicate a willingness to politically finesse a cricketing choice. To exile Laxman to the margins of the team, to make an extra of a batsman who by right should be seen as one of the anchors of India's Test match batting over the next few years, is inexplicable especially when the captain who has made that call had the privilege of playing glorious second-fiddle to Laxman through his great, match-winning innings in Kolkata in 2001.