The Spectator

The rise in frequency of Farah Khan ads teaching you dance moves along-with multi-genre group of people splashing colour across your TV screens subtly reminds that the carnival is just round the corner. The gradual transition into the IPL-mode is settling in: electronic & print media are offering the routine previews, foreign players are sounding excited with landing in India and team PR mechanisms are striving to stir up fervour and adumbration! Yet, you get this feeling of déjà vu leading up to April 3, like the IPL season succeeding the 2011 world cup. The magnitude of India’s recent success might not be as big as that win, but for followers struggling to find a source of joy in the last 18-24 months, the 4-0 series win has quenched the deep/longstanding thirst. An 8-test long home series with a couple of ODI series squeezed in between has already left followers spent. The presence of the look-forward-to element might be IPL-6’s biggest test. Not that IPL-6 is arriving un...

A couple of taps of the bat as the bowler starts running in. Optimum backlift, negligible trigger motion, minimal feet movement and bang! No exaggerated follow through or flourish. Rarely did this series of events skip VVS Laxman’s batting regime and rarely did his knocks lack élan and flair. Laxman’s legacy is unparalleled and we often walk down that rich memory lane; more often it is the reverberating effect of his batting that clings onto our mind, this piece tries to look through that mechanism! What worked for Laxman so well - those waxy wrists? being tall? hand-eye co-ordination? Probably a bit of all, but what stands out in his batting is the timing. Often players with the gift of precise timing are attributed with postures straight out of the coaching manuals, but with Laxman rarely did you find the one-knee-bent cover drives or quick-feet-using-depth-of-the-crease cross bat shots. Thus those wrists and prominent back-foot play were principally based on the ability t...