- Take a great modern Test batsman (i.e. someone with avg easily over 50 plus)
- Strip his Test stats of ALL "fair weather" runs
- Check his residual batting average
Does his century count still top 16?
And does he have the number of match winning non-hundreds as the 'benchmark' has?
And has he scored nearly a third of his career runs against the most dominant side of his era?
Yes? NOW call him great.
Else, you can still continue calling him great but with added words.
"Great but not quite VVS"
Update:
Quote from Siddharth Monga on cricinfo:
While in Colombo they (Laxman's India teammates) walked out as if they had known Laxman was always going to win them the match, there was more exuberance today, but they were still not going to mob him Twenty20-style.
In the world of Laxman, you don't act all surprised after one of his near-impossible match-winning knocks.
