This message landed in my Facebook message box: “How good are u as an editor I wonder? Why don’t u ponder how really good the likes of Laxman and Sehwag are?”

I wouldn’t say I am surprised by the feedback to my previous post. But a bit disappointed, yes, because the point I was trying to make seems to have been largely missed.

My intent was not to put Thilan Samaraweera, or Sri Lanka batsmen, down. I was trying to use Samaraweera to illustrate the devaluation of batting averages in the 21st century. I pointed out how reality has caught up with Mike Hussey too. Perhaps a lot of you have responded to the headline, which read: “How good is Samaraweera?” With hindsight, we could perhaps have used “The truth about batting averages”.

Now let me use the example of another Sri Lankan batsman to further argue my case.

Aravinda de Silva played his Tests between 1984 and 2002. He was a breathtaking strokeplayer who came to be called Mad Max after he brought up his first Test hundred hooking Imran Khan for six. He scored another century in the same series, 105
out of a team score of 230. The second-highest score was 25. By then he had been promoted to No. 3; and his runs came against Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Abdul Qadir.

His next century came in Australia, a quite brilliant 167 in Brisbane, in only his second Test in that country. In the following Test, in Hobart, he scored 147 (75 and 72). And his next hundred was 267 off 380 balls, in his first appearance in New Zealand.

He finished with an average of 42.97 from 93 Tests. It felt right. De Silva was a good batsman who played some great innings. He could have scored more
runs, but he played too many strokes for his own good. He left a lot of memories, perhaps none better than the half-century and hundred in the semi-final and final of the 1996 World Cup.

In a few months we will be picking an all-time Test XI for Sri Lanka. I will bet that de Silva will be one of the first names on the shortlist. I am not so sure about Samaraweera.

VVS Laxman? He is perhaps a bit like de Silva: a good batsman with some great innings. But is he as good as GR Viswanath, who had a lower average? I
love watching Laxman bat, but he wouldn’t make my all-time Indian XI. Vishy would.

Sehwag is a different story. I don’t think he would have averaged 50 in the 1990s. But wherever he has played and whoever he has played against, he has made runs. Big runs and in an emphatic manner. But is he as good as Sachin Tendulkar? Let’s not even go there.

	© AFP

With his second successive hundred against New Zealand, Thilan Samaraweera has taken his batting average to over 50, the magic number that used to confer greatness on Test batsmen. He now stands 29th on the all-time averages list, and if the list is restricted to batsmen with a minimum of 50 Tests, he jumps to 18.

Samaraweera, of course, deserves his success. In March this year he was hit by a bullet when terrorists attacked the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore, and he feared he would never play cricket again. He had just hit two back-to-back double-hundreds then. You can argue that his returns have been halved now. But as S Rajesh tells us, Samaraweera has had a cracking couple of years, averaging over 76 in his last 15 Tests.

Still, how good is he? We perhaps don’t know yet. He averages 31.22 against Australia, 24.66 against South Africa, 28.87 against England. In Australia he averages 22.66, in England 4.25, and in India 10.50. He has played 30 of his 54 Tests at home, and averages nearly 60 in them. Seven of his 11 hundreds have come at home, and his career average has been massively boosted by his five Tests in Pakistan, in which he scored 633 runs at 90.42 with three hundreds. His other hundred came in the West Indies.

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	Ponting's Headingley fifty had all the makings of a classic © Getty Images

Marcus North was Man of the Match for his second hundred of the series, Michael Clarke scored more runs than him, and even Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann nearly scored as many but, for me, Ricky Ponting’s was the innings of the match – and, arguably, even the innings of the series.

Rightly, batsmen are judged not merely by the number of runs they produce but the quality of those runs. It was clear from the merry romp of England’s ninth-wicket pair that batsmen can do plenty of things once the pressure has lifted. With nothing to lose, and nothing to fear, Broad and Swann were able to flay the same bowlers who terrorised their top-order colleagues for two successive days. Ponting, though, switched on his act when the match was still open.

When a Test side gets bowled out for about a hundred runs on the first day, it is natural to assume that the conditions are tilted heavily towards the bowlers. Australia entered the match with a history of weakness against swing bowling. It cost them the series in 2005 and the Test at Lord’s this summer, and when the ball swung for one session at Edgbaston they lost seven wickets for 77. In most cases, bowling your opponents out for 102 in the first innings is good enough win a Test, but only if your own batsmen don’t perform as badly.

Ponting had gone missing after a big hundred in his first appearance in the series, and the pitch at Cardiff was so benign that only six Australian wickets fell in 180 overs. In the previous innings, when Australia were in danger of losing the Test, he was bowled through the gate by an offspinner, the species that has troubled him throughout his career. And he came to the crease here after Steve Harmison, a man returning to the Ashes battle, had claimed an early wicket with a nasty, steepling ball that Simon Katich was forced to fend off in front his face. The first ball he faced from Harmison zipped through Ponting’s bat and his body, not far from the inside edge.

From here, Ponting produced 78 off 101 balls. At one point, he was 32 off 20 balls, with five fours and a six. It was thrilling, counter-attacking batting on a pitch that still had plenty for the bowlers. It can be argued that England bowled poorly to him but often a great batsman in supreme touch can have that effect on bowlers. By the time he was out Australia were ahead by 38 runs and would have had to bat like zombies to lose the Test from there.

As the years roll by, the scorecard will reveal Ponting’s contribution as one of the half-centuries in a match Australia utterly dominated. The truth is that it was the defining innings of the match. It had every ingredient that makes a great innings: counter-attack, supreme skills, the purest of strokes, and most of all, coming when it truly mattered.

	VVS Laxman drives during his epic 281 in Kolkata © AFP

As some of you promptly pointed out, I forgot to mention Gautam Gambhir in my post on batsmen who use their feet against spinners. Hell, Gambhir even jumps down the pitch against the quick bowlers, and that takes some nerve. He was India’s best batsman on their last Test tour of Sri Lanka, where some of his more illustrious colleagues struggled to decode Ajantha Mendis. Virender Sehwag’s double-century in
Galle was the innings of the series, but Gambhir was the most consistent and secure Indian batsman on tour.

For sheer viewing pleasure, though, I’d still go for Michael Clarke. Gambhir is quick out of crease, but he is more jerky, and he moves around a bit too much; sometimes he gives himself away by moving out too early. Clarke is more fluid and graceful and he keeps the bowlers guessing.

Traditionally, Indian batsmen have always used their feet against the spinners, as have the Australians. Good players of spin bowling don’t merely hit booming shots after having come down pitch, but often knock the ball around for singles. Sunil Gavaskar, who had the surest footwork, did it all the time, as did Ravi Shastri. Gavaskar never swept. And he rarely lofted
the ball.

So also VVS Laxman. Of the all the things he did at the Eden Gardens in
2001, his driving against Shane Warne was the most sensational. One ball,
he’d drive Warne off the rough and against the spin through midwicket. The
next, Warne would go fractionally wider and Laxman would drive it inside-out
through cover. He was god that day.

Of course, no one did better for a whole series than Brian Lara. Warne has
confessed to having nightmares about Sachin Tendulkar jumping down the
pitch; I wonder what visions Muttiah Muralitharan had in his sleep in those
days in 2001, when Lara tormented him with the most dazzling array of
strokes you could ever see employed against a spinner. In picking the ball
out of the bowler’s hand, Lara had few rivals.

Carl Hooper, his team-mate, was one. I was told this delightful story about
Hooper by a cricketer. Warne forever looked for little signs in batsmen that
would give him foreknowledge about a possible sortie down the pitch. But
Hooper proved impossible to decipher. He stayed still till the last possible
moment, and never left the crease before the ball was delivered. Finally,
after many overs, and many videotapes, Warne cracked it. It was in the eyes.
If Hooper had decided to advance down the pitch, his eyes widened and the
stare grew a bit harder in the stance.

If I ever have a conversation with Warne, the first thing I will ask him is
if he managed to exploit this knowledge.

	For Michael Clarke, the sashay is a mere extension of his footwork © Getty Images

I like watching Michael Clarke bat. He is not quite the stylist in the mould of Mark Waugh and Damien Martyn, the two recent pleasure givers from Australia. His batting is not as much about touch as it is about quick hands. In that, in there is a bit of Steve Waugh in him.

But I can’t take my eyes off him, when he is batting against spinners. There is something about batsmen who use their feet, and the contest between a courageous spinner and a courageous batsman is one of the great joys of cricket. It’s a battle of wits as well as of skills.

Usually, cricket’s central action, the act of bat meeting the ball, or the ball beating the bat, lasts only a moment. The rest is all build up. Watching the bowler galloping can be a sight, but rarely does a run-up reveal anything. But when you see a batsman spring to his feet, it heightens anticipation: you know something is about to happen. Apart from a ball hit in the air in the direction of a fielder, nowhere is the drama as drawn out. That an aggressive stroke is not inevitable only enriches the experience.

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