Nottingham, July 28: Senior Indian batsman VVS Laxman feels that his team has the wherewithal to fight back at Trent Bridge after the loss at Lord’s.
"We have the potential to bounce back and we have done that in the past," Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. "We lost badly against South Africa in Centurion but came back strongly to draw the Test series for the first time on South African soil." After losing to South Africa in the first Test match at Centurion, India bounced back to win the second game at Durban in the last Test series that they played.
Analysing the match at Lord’s Laxman said, "I would not [give] much importance [to] the way the English bowlers bowled. They just bowled in good areas, they got their wickets and rewards. It was not an exceptional bowling attack where they ran through our batting. Had they got us [out for under] 150 in both the innings, then I would have accepted that they ran through our batting attack."
On their previous tour here in 2007, India were in a similar situation and won their second match at the same venue.
"The difference was the 150-120 runs extra that we gave to England and it was due to the absence of Zaheer Khan. If we had a third regular seamer or someone like Zaheer who would have run through their batting, the results would have been different,” he added.
"We had them at 65 for five and if we had one more fresh bowler, we would have probably bowled them out and then have had to chase something around 260-280 which we would have done easily," said the Hyderabad batsman who has played a crucial role in several Indian victories through a long career.
Laxman’s fantastic 281 runs in the second Test against Australia at Eden Gardens in 2001 enabled India to win the match and is considered to be one of the all time great innings. A Daily Telegraph panel comprising Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Vaughan and Steve Waugh chose the game as the best Test match of all time.
Recalling the match and giving due credit to his partners in the game, Laxman said, “To be very honest, when we went into the third day's afternoon, when Steve [Waugh] put us in following on, the opening partnership between [Sadagoppan] Ramesh and [Shiv Sundar] Das laid the foundation for us."
"And when I walked in on the third day’s evening, I never thought about a turnaround in the Test match. We went out with the mindset to play each ball [on] its merit and prolong the game as long as possible,” he said.
He further added, "I was disappointed at not getting 300 but [having said] that, [Glenn] McGrath's lbw moment [when India won the game] is something we all cherish in our career."
