Team India batting legend VVS Laxman's innings of 281 runs against Australia in 2001 at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata has been voted as the best performance in the longest format of the international game by a 25-member panel of cricketers, writers, broadcasters, historians and statisticians, gathered by the Cricket Monthly.
Unfortunately, Sachin Tendulkar does not feature in the Top 50 performance in Test cricket in the last 50 years. However, Rahul Dravid and Virender Sehwag have made their way into that top 50 list. Dravid's performance in the Adelaide Test against Australia in 2003, where he single-handedly won the Test match for India, and Sehwag's 309 in Multan against Pakistan made the cut, while Sunil Gavaskar made the list more than once.
Coming back to Laxman - that Test match turned unbelievably in India's favour, after the partnership of Dravid and Laxman in the second innings, after India had followed on. India were 1-0 down in the series and they were trailing by 274 runs in the second innings. It was then that Laxman pulled off this masterpiece innings where he completely demolished the Australian bowling attack.
After Laxman's heroics with the bat, Indian spinners Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble did the rest, as they cleaned up the Australian batting lineup in no time on Day 5 of the Test match.
Watch the highlight of that legendary innings here:
Former cricketers, who had experienced that innings of Laxman, recalled that Test match and heaped praise on the elegant right-hander.
"I was bowling in the foot marks and Laxman was hitting the same ball through cover or whipping it through midwicket. It was so hard to bowl then," Shane Warne was quoted as saying by Cricket Monthly.
"Laxman's work through the leg side in particular was a source of wonderment to many of us... Ultimately we bowled for near enough to two days at him without even looking like getting him out," former Australian captain Ricky Ponting recalled.
Other legends like Brain Lara, Ian Botham and Curtly Ambrose feature more than once in the list of 50 top performances in Test cricket.
