Laxman-Afridi duel does not reach any conclusion

Laxman was not happy with the way Shahid Afridi made comments about his captaincy in the last years IPL Tournament according to the news reports. Laxman was of the view that it didn't helped the team's cause and was definitely not in tune. Shahid Afridi commented in news papers regarding Laxman's captaincy and said Australia's Gilchrist would have made a good captain in his place.

I think it is too early to say what went wrong with IPL Hyderabad team of Deccan Chargers last year, there are many reasons behind the below par performance by the Deccan Chargers, team collectively under performed, Andrew Symonds left the team after his stint at the IPL for the tour of West Idies and many other factors did not go as expected, which Laxman defended in his response to Afridi's comments. Afridi's temperament is that of a hard hitting batsman who wants to hit from the very first ball quite contrast to Laxman's style of play. Laxman's style of play basically suits more Test version of the game, but it doesn't mean that a batsman cannot be as effective in other formats of the game. But this might hold true that a hitter batsman cannot adapt to Test variant where a batsman needs to apply more at the wicket for longer periods of time.

Laxman did much as a captain for the team by sacrificing the Icon status to accommodate Symonds in the team, at that time it was a huge attraction, coming out of the unceremonious happenings involving Harbhajan singh, talking about the captaincy on field, I think it is about the team balance and how fellow team mates respond to the situation at hand, no matter it is a 20-20 game, still there has to be a collective effort and an individual's failure cannot be the whole reason behind a team's failure. Actually it was Laxman, Afridi and Gilchrist who didn't performed to their potential, the local players did well. Symmonds did well with the bat but also gave away too many runs with the ball, if anybody remembers Delhi team's overhauling Deccan chargers total at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi stadium at Uppal, it was Sehwag who won that match for Delhi from size able contribution from Gautam Gambhir.