Batting great VVS Laxman on Tuesday recollected how he wanted the Indian team to return home immediately after the infamous monkey-gate scandal at Sydney in 2007-08. \u201cI was the one who suggested that we should go back home immediately because it was clear it was one-sided and it was not fair but Anil showed great leadership qualities and managed everything,\u201d Laxman said during the Delhi launch of his book \u2018281 and Beyond\u2019 here.<\/p>\n
India lost the second Test of the 2007\u201308 Border Gavaskar Trophy after Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds found themselves in the middle of a racial abuse scandal which, coupled with some questionable umpire decisions, had snowballed into a big crisis and Indian team had threatened to abandon the tour before ICC intervened.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerth win mattered for what happened at Sydney. We as a team felt that we were let down by umpires, there were a lot of atrocious decision given against us, and we lost that match, so it was important for us to win at Perth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laxman credited the \u201cbig-hearted\u201d Indian tail-enders for making it possible for him to score runs during his illustrious Test career for India. \u201cI was very selfish because no. 6 was not a position suited to my batting. My batting suited number 3 as I could use the pace of the ball. Batting at No. 6 meant that invariably the opposition captains would set the field and ball at the tail-enders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I had to come up with a strategy to score runs, to build a partnership. I used to play big shots and get out initially. So I had a discussion with John Wright and we thought it was important to enhance the batting skills of the bowlers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these bowlers had a big heart. There were challenging bowlers at that time which required technique. So it was decided that each batsman was responsible for a bowler, so I realised that the only way I can score runs was by rotating the strikes. So thanks to them for playing with such mental toughness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laxman said he had a lot of negativity after failing to retire with a win against Australia Down Under in a four Test series in 2011\u201312. \u201cThere was a lot of frustration and negative emotions in me specially after losing 0-4 in Australia because it was my dream to retire on a high and I was not able to achieve that and I was shattered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Batting great VVS Laxman on Tuesday recollected how he wanted the Indian team to return home immediately after the infamous monkey-gate scandal at Sydney in 2007-08. \u201cI was the one who suggested that we should go back home immediately because it was clear it was one-sided and it was not fair but Anil showed great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49167,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49165\/revisions\/49167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}