Vvs Quotes

The night before the Pune match, we had gone out for dinner—Viru, Zak and I. Out of the blue, Viru told me, ‘Laxman bhai, you had a great opportunity to make a triple hundred in the Kolkata Test, but unfortunately, you didn’t. Now you wait and watch, I will become the first Indian to score 300 in Test cricket.’ My jaw dropped and I stared at him in astonishment. This guy had played just four ODIs, wasn’t anywhere close to Test selection, and here he was, making the most outrageous of claims. For a second, I thought he was joking, but Viru was dead serious. To be honest, I didn’t know what to make of it.

I prided myself on being level-headed, but MS took it to another level when he said, ‘Lachi bhai, what is the point of feeling dejected and depressed? All it will do is harm your performance even more. We must identify the areas where we are lacking, and address them. That is the only way forward.

I was extremely impressed with how MS approached the Test captaincy. His maturity, balanced approach, game awareness and understanding of the psyche of his teammates helped get the best out of everyone. What stood out was the way he handled the senior players under him—Sachin, Rahul, Viru, Bhajji, Zak and I. We were all leaders within the group. We were self-motivated and took a lot of pride in our performance, and he enabled us. His man-management was outstanding, his self-belief refreshingly reassuring. I never got the impression that he was insecure or that he looked over his shoulder because there were so many seniors in the team. MS was non-interfering when it came to the established core group, but he invited suggestions from all of us. Whether he took those suggestions on board or not was not important. But he did hear everyone out before making his decision. The buck stopped with him, but by involving us in the process, he sent out a strong message of inclusiveness. If MS had been insecure and had not sought us out, there was every possibility that we might have gone about our business, not knowing if the skipper even wanted our inputs.

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MS didn’t come across as someone who was too ambitious. He seemed to enjoy every minute of being part of the team. We knew little about where he came from, or what hardships he had endured to get to where he had. Most youngsters breaking into the team are so busy trying to establish themselves that the fun element goes out of their cricket, and I say this from experience. MS was different. Whether he was batting, keeping wicket or at training, he had a ball. His room was an open house, the door open till past midnight. He was a big PlayStation freak, with a special liking for war games. He was understandably shy when he broke into the team, but we got to know each other well because I stood in the slips and we had lots of conversations. What stood out was his balance and maturity as a human being. He understood the game really well, and his situational awareness was excellent. And he had plenty of self-belief. He was unorthodox as a wicketkeeper and batsman, but he didn’t succumb to pressure and try to be classical. He had a unique batting technique, and because he knew his game so well, he knew how to use it to score runs. At the end of the day, the most important thing was runs on the board. MS didn’t care if people thought he scored those runs prettily or otherwise.

Prokhorovka became the kernel of the legend of Kursk as the “greatest tank battle of all time,” in which, Soviet accounts claimed, the vaunted Wehrmacht lost 2,900 tanks including 700 Tigers—a claim embraced by a popular Western historian in the 1974 study The Tigers Are Burning.21 The real story was nothing like this. By the time Hausser’s Second SS Panzer Corps engaged the Russians at Prokhorovka, his three armored divisions contained all of 211 operational tanks, of which only 15 were Tigers and none were Panthers. German losses at Prokhorovka between July 11 and 13, during the most intense fighting, amounted to 48 panzers, against Soviet losses of between 400 (Rotmistrov’s own estimate) and 650 tanks—a ratio favoring the Germans by nearly ten to one. Even the low-end Soviet estimate is now 1,614 tanks lost in the Kursk sector up to July 23, while some specialists believe the correct figure is 1,956. This compares to German panzer losses of 252 (low end) and 278 (the high estimate). The armor-loss ratio in this supposedly crushing Soviet victory thus favored the Germans by at least eight to one. The story was similarly lopsided in the air: the VVS saw somewhere between 459 and 1,961 warplanes knocked out of action, against Luftwaffe losses of 159.

Lala Har Dayal, Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Senapati Bapat, V.V.S. Aiyar, M.P.T. Acharya, J.C. Mukherjee, Madan Lal Dhingra, Gyanchand Verma, Bhai Parmanand, Sardar Singh Rana and Madame Bhikaji Cama.

imbibe when it eludes you. Ultimately, your character cannot change according to the outcome. You are what you are as a person. Your legacy as a human being doesn’t depend on the results you produce.

enjoy your friends’ happiness, your teammates’ success, as if it’s your own.

It was a valuable lesson; the line between passion and obsession is a thin but crucial one and if you are not careful, the joy can quickly go out of your game.

As was typical in those days, if you weren’t playing the Test, you didn’t get to bat in the nets the day before the match, like I didn’t ahead of the second Test in Kolkata. I still went down to Eden in the evening to practise on my own, and it was Harsha Bhogle who bowled to me! The next morning, I was told that I was playing the Test. Harsha must have given me a good workout, for I danced to 95 and had a big opening stand with Sidhu, but fell with a century beckoning.

If we had misgivings when it came to Greg—and we did have plenty, yes—it wasn’t because of our egos. We never felt we were bigger than the game. I can certainly speak for myself, and I will say this much—Greg sent out conflicting signals, treating me with a callousness that I found shockingly unacceptable. I will always respect Greg Chappell the batsman. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Greg Chappell the coach.

The night before the Pune match, we had gone out for dinner—Viru, Zak and I. Out of the blue, Viru told me, ‘Laxman bhai, you had a great opportunity to make a triple hundred in the Kolkata Test, but unfortunately, you didn’t. Now you wait and watch, I will become the first Indian to score 300 in Test cricket.

to have the Eden crowd firmly behind me, in my corner, rooting for me and willing me to do well, is something I will cherish for ever and ever. ‘Lokhon da, tumi raaan korbe (Laxman da, you will score runs),’ used to be a constant from the time I got off the plane in Kolkata. Unaccustomed to the fanfare and to being in the limelight, I took my time getting used to it. I realised just how much they wanted me to do well—from our bus driver to the room-service waiter, from the hotel receptionists to the ever-smiling masseur in the dressing room. I felt elated, fortunate and blessed. When so many people are genuinely hoping and wishing and praying for your success, how can you not walk the extra mile to keep those smiles on

We had had physios before Andrew, and several afterwards, but he was the only member of the support staff for whom the team hosted a farewell dinner when he left us towards the end of 2004. He was a consummate professional, but also a wonderful and trustworthy friend.

Anil is the greatest competitor I have played with or against. I’ve never known him to take a backward step or shy away from a challenge. He would be itching for the ball on day one of a Test match in England or South Africa, on pitches that had nothing for the spinner

Perhaps it is the fate of all great sporting performances to be forgotten somewhat if the team eventually loses. Would we care overly about VVS Laxman’s 281 or Ian Botham’s 149 without the efforts of Harbhajan Singh and Bob Willis who turned these great feats from potentially heroic failures to match-winning epics?

In 2011 India’s Test team was crowned as world cricket’s leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled.

It is quite easy, however, to get carried away by all the hype and adulation. When you walk out to incessant, unmissable chants of your name bursting forth from every corner of the packed ground, you can’t but feel a million feet tall. The adrenaline surge you feel as you brace for battle amplifies when the crowd goes bananas. It becomes imperative then, to find that happy space within your head where you derive inspiration from the encouragement of the fans, but don’t start to believe that you are invincible. It is not an easy balance to strike, believe me. And that is where Sachin stood head and shoulders above the rest. From his first Test to his 200th, he was greeted with euphoria, treated like royalty, made to feel as special as he obviously was. And yet, he never allowed that to get to him. Among the many things I admired and envied about him was his single-mindedness of purpose, his unwavering concentration, his ability to shut out everything but the immediate task at hand. It’s no accident that he stacked up the numbers he did.

Several of my friends told me that I was missing out on all the ‘fun’ things in life. They asked me to loosen up, to enjoy myself, to go out with them to watch movies, and to not be obsessed with cricket. How could I convince them that I was having fun? That I was enjoying myself? That cricket was not an obsession, it was my calling. I didn’t just want to play cricket, I loved playing it. I looked forward to the early morning routine, springing out of bed and getting ready for the nets. After a while, I stopped trying to explain myself or my lifestyle.