Cricketers, like all athletes, have defining performances. The one that above all others reveals the essential style, the uniqueness, the essential person. These are often made in adverse conditions, against the run of play. Often they cause a captain to tell his dressing room, as Don Bradman did during an innings by Stan McCabe: “Come and watch this, you’ll never see the likes of it again.”
You can imagine skipper Sourav Ganguly saying something similar while V.V.S. Laxman was compiling 281 in Kolkata as India beat Australia after following on.
Not all defining innings led to victories. Sunil Gavaskar’s 221 at the Oval left the match drawn, while Sachin Tendulkar’s 136 in Chennai against Pakistan couldn’t prevent defeat. Was that Tendulkar’s best innings, or should that title go to his 143 against Australia in Sharjah, the so-called Desert storm in a One-Day International? Perhaps it was the 114 he made on a bouncy Perth track as a 19-year-old?
Not all such innings are centuries either. Gundappa Vishwanath’s unbeaten 97 in the Chennai Test against the West Indies was more Vishy-like than even his double century against England.
It is not always remembered that India won Laxman’s Test thanks as much to Harbhajan Singh’s 13 wickets including India’s first hat-trick. That must rate as the off-spinner’s defining performance — just as Anil Kumble’s 10 for 74 in Delhi in the second innings against Pakistan will remain his.
Defining performance
Although Kapil Dev once took nine wickets in a Test innings, his defining performance may be the unbeaten 175 he made against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup? My favourite, however, was his 129 in Port Elizabeth on India’s first tour of South Africa where he seemed to be playing at a different level from everybody else. The next highest score was 17.
The Kolkata Test also saw the quintessential Rahul Dravid — calm, supportive, classical — as he made 180 in a partnership with Laxman. Dependable, as a current commercial featuring him has it. There was a brief ‘Indiranagar ka goonda’ in one of his early Tests, at the Wanderers where he made 148 after showing fast bowler Allan Donald who was boss!
The statistician Anantha Narayanan wrote in a study recently that he calculates Ravichandran Ashwin will finish with 656 Test wickets, more than any other Indian. Ashwin reinvents himself regularly, and his defining performance will probably come closer to the end when he has mastered all his variations and worked out his tricks.
I once wrote — my only excuse being I was young and raw — that Sunil Gavaskar’s batting, like history, repeats itself. It was a silly thing to say, and I was taken to task by the sports editor. No two innings by any batter is exactly alike, and part of a reporter’s job is to train himself to notice the differences.
Variety and surprise are keys to mastery
If Gavaskar hit a straight drive off every ball that was pitched up to him, or Virat Kohli played that unique on-drive suggestive of a tennis player’s cross-court shot, cricket would be so much poorer. Variety and surprise are keys to mastery.
Every player is capable of one moment of greatness in a career, but the best players have many of them, and closer together.
After he had made 192 in Auckland where he dominated the New Zealand bowlers, Mohammad Azharuddin was asked which was his favourite stroke. “The one that goes exactly where I want it to,” he answered. Virender Sehwag would agree.
His 195 at Melbourne where he perished attempting the six that would get him to his double, was probably that batter’s defining innings. He shook the bowling by the scruff of the neck, hit 25 fours and five sixes and was out hitting a full toss to long on. He was a stranger to caution.
In his first Test as captain, Virat Kohli made two centuries, the second of which nearly took India to victory. In the end they fell short by 48 runs, but Kohli’s aggressive approach as batter and captain captured the cricket world’s imagination. Especially since it all began with a knock on the helmet from a Mitchell Johnson express.
Will someone else have the same list? Unlikely. And that’s part of the joy of sport.
