today watching india playing against australia-i was moved to tears and superlatives-watching some very very special batsmen-a roll of honour of batsmen through the ages-sachin, dravid, ganguly and of course the man who deserves the special tag of very very special-laxman.
           we have had virtuosos,bravehearts-gavaskar must be in contention with sachin as the greatest indian batsman-we had the likes of amarnath , vishvanath,vengsarkar,merchant, hazare,umrigar, pataudi-et al-
but what has brought dignity and bravado to this indian team is the flair, individual genius, fighting spirit, and guts of these four batsmen-whom i would like to to describe as the best middle order ever in the history of the game-
if you readers think it is sacrilige-let me state my reasons.
            cricket historians have always described a winning team to be dependent on its bowlers-the only match winning bowler we have is anil kumble-the others are birds of passage-in fact i would recommend that any indian fast bowler who can bowl at 130 km per hour can send an application to bcci-and he may be accomodated.
           -apart from the rare occasions that an indian bowler has won a match-what has made this team special-it is the team of very very special batsmen-let me elaborate.
sahin ramesh tendulkar-38 centuries, 22 abroad, 16 of them above 150- let us not talk of one day statistics-we talk of bradman-we talk of sobers-but when we consider the sort of day to day pressures that sachin has faced and the variety of performances over a twenty year period-and his mastery over twenty years-and what makes it special-is the spirit-i first got an idea of his heart when in the outfield those small feet scampered, then flew, then dived to catch an improbable catch at long on-this was in 1990-his first tour of england-those feet still run -that heart still beats for india-the brave heart of the indian team.
         shall i talk about ganguly-a scrapper who brought a feeling of self respect to the team-on his comeback-
one of the performing cricketers of the team-the robert bruce of the team-i am talking of the scottish king.
             about dravid- almost 10000 test runs-but the ultimate team man-what can i talk about one of indias -nay one ofthe worlds greatest cricketers- who is willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of the team- a man after scoring close to 10000 runs is made a sacrificial opener-he in my book is vidura.
    i come to very very special laxman-i must admit i have never seen any cricketer employ the sort of magic, laxman has displayed with the bat -i have watched videos, cinema clips, read books, watched visvanath ,sobers, kanhai -but in my limited experienced i can challenge any cricketer from earth and mars-laxman is unique-he is krishna.
karmanye vadikarasthe ma paleshu-indian cricket seems to echo the principles of the bhagavad geetha-
but what does it matter if we can enjoy the sublime skills of the four musketeers-pretenders like dhoni and yuvaraj must have understood what real cricket is all about Close