VVS Laxman's batting against Australia at Eden Gardens voted as Greatest Test performance!

VVS Laxman’s batting feat against Australia at Kolkata in 2001 has been rated as the greatest Test performance of the last 50 years, by his fellow players, commentators and journalists in a poll published in the January issue of ESPN’s digital magazine the Cricket Monthly.

In the astonishing Test match, where he was at his sublime best, Laxman scored 59 and 281. India trailed by 274 runs in the game, in a series they trailed 0-1, against a team on a record winning streak and widely acknowledged as one of the best to have ever played the game. India went on to win the match and the series.

The Cricket Monthly’s “50 from 50” exercise looks at batting, bowling and all-round performances in Test matches played between 1966 and 2015. Full details of the poll can found in The Cricket Monthly (https://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/949999).

In his tribute, one of seven by participants in the Test, Shane Warne recalls: “I was bowling in the footmarks and Laxman was hitting the same ball through cover or whipping it through midwicket. It was so hard to bowl then.” Ricky Ponting remembers that “his work through the leg side in particular was a source of wonderment to many of us... Ultimately we bowled for near enough to two days at him without even looking like getting him out.” Zaheer Khan, his room-mate, recalls how Laxman slept on the floor through the match because of a bad back, while Andrew Leipus, the Indian physio, tells us the full extent of Laxman’s physical challenge.

Brian Lara has the most entries in the list of 50, with four, including the No. 4: the nerveless 153 not out versus Australia in Barbados in 1999. Ian Botham, who has three entries in the 50, comes in with two in the top five: the dazzling all-round shows in the Headingley Ashes Test of 1981 (No. 2) and the Golden Jubilee Test in Bombay the previous year (No. 5). Michael Holding’s 14 wickets with supreme pace on a batting track at The Oval in 1976 is at No. 3, and performances by Richard Hadlee, Bob Massie, Muttiah Muralitharan, Graham Gooch and Garry Sobers round out the top ten.

West Indian players have as many 14 entries in the 50, the most by any team. These include the two earliest performances on the list: Sobers at Lord’s and Headingley from the 1966 series in England. The most recent performance is Kevin Pietersen’s 186 in Mumbai in 2012.

The 25-member jury, drawn from all Test-playing nations, includes veterans like Greg Chappell, John Wright, Tony Cozier, Mark Nicholas, Sanjay Manjrekar, Mike Selvey, Ramiz Raja, Scyld Berry, Osman Samiuddin and Gideon Haigh.