After excelling with his wristy batting in the recent Test series against Australia, the Indian team management has given VVS Laxman a free passage for the ongoing one-day contests.
Laxman played two matches, making 16 from 19 balls in Melbourne and unbeaten 13 from 24 balls in Hobart, where the match was sewn up for all practical purposes when he strode in to bat.
For a batsman who brooks no opposition in batting aesthetics even from the talented Indian line-up, Laxman has not quite found his feet in the hustle and bustle of one-day cricket.
He cut his teeth in the one-day arena in 1998 but has been unconvincing to the extent that he has only 60 appearances in nearly seven years of international cricket.
Compared with him, Virender Sehwag, Mohammad Kaif, Dinesh Mongia and even Hemang Badani have played in 81, 59, 48 and 32 one-day games in last two years or so.
Keith Stackpole, the former Australian opener who retired when one-day cricket was beginning to take roots in the 1960s, tried to analyse Laxman's one-day game.
"Laxman is great in Test cricket, he plonks his feet and drives through covers and brings his wristy play to leave the onside field flat-footed," said Stackpole.
"But in the one-day arena, at his batting spot, you do not get your scores in fours -- you have got to be prepared to accumulate your runs."
Stackpole likens Laxman's situation to Australia's Michael Slater and Roy Fredericks of the West Indies, the two swashbuckling Test players who did not make an impression in the one-day arena.
"Slater was very aggressive in Test cricket, but in one-day cricket he somehow wanted to rush up his game still further and complicated things for himself. He made 73 in his first one-day game and it remained his top score in 42 appearances."
"Similarly Fredericks, a swashbuckling opener, wanted to crack boundaries every second ball. We used to give him a single to third man first ball and then keep him at the other end for the next five balls, depriving him of the strike and manipulating him to play rashly."
Laxman dearly wants to prove himself in one-day arena and missing out on a berth in the 2003 World Cup remains one of the greatest disappointments of his career.
He is in prime form of his career at the moment and India are looking to maximise their scoring potential through him even though his performances abroad (441 runs from 30 games) is quite ordinary.
Laxman scored a match-winning 87 in Sri Lanka a few seasons ago but that is about the only innings abroad which comes to mind besides another fifty which he scored in the same series.
Laxman's stay was extended on the last tour Down Under in 1999-2000 after that stupendous 167 at the Sydney Cricket Ground but his successive scores of 9, 2, 2, 7, 1 and 3 as an opener in the following triangular series showed a man clueless about the abbreviated form of the game.
In the last couple of years, especially since his epic 281 against Australia at Eden Gardens in 2001, Laxman has found a regular place for himself in the Test arena but limited overs cricket remains an elusive art for this admirable batsman.
He is not the greatest of movers in the field but if that was the criteria, quite a few Indian players would not find a place in the eleven. He usually does not scurry for quick singles between the wickets but that too is not looked at harshly, not till now, in the Indian way of things towards one-day cricket.
Laxman has virtually forced the hands of tour selectors in the present one-day series with his magnificent Test form. Such was his form that his omission would have caused public outrage, if not demonstrations, in India. It is up to the Hyderabadi now to reproduce his Test form and book his one-day spot for seasons to come.