The Very Very Special Playbook

The life mantras that helped VVS Laxman, one of India’s most elegant batsmen, navigate international cricket are applicable well beyond the field.

- Kathakali Chanda

On the face of it, VVS Laxman is no Mark Zuckerberg. Or Steve Jobs. Or Bill Gates. But if you rewind to their teenage years, you could easily draw a parallel between the lanky Hyderabadi with an exceptional academic record in the sciences—he was the state’s highest scorer in the subjects in his class 10 exams—and the Silicon Valley honchos audacious enough to ditch formal education for something far more perilous.

At 17, Laxman was faced with a difficult career choice: Take up medicine, the profession of his parents; or, play a game that had a 50:50 chance of bringing him recognition, but certainly not enough money to be chosen over medical science. Back then, cricket wasn’t a game of astronomical pay cheques as it is now, and medical science was considered to be the safe option. That he chose cricket, and his parents backed him unconditionally despite them being a middle-class family, was no less daring than Facebook founder Zuckerberg’s decision to drop out of Harvard University.

In hindsight, the risk worked out well. Really well. And Laxman doesn’t just have close to 9,000 Test runs to prove it. He has also introduced to Indian cricket a number that has come to symbolise a paradigm-shifting moment in the game: 281. That’s his score against Australia in a Test match at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens in 2001. In what was arguably the biggest comebacks in the history of cricket, Laxman, along with Rahul Dravid, carried his bat through the fourth day to not only pull India back from the brink of defeat, but also shape a generation’s approach to tough situations.