The most significant event of this Test match happened before the toss, when India left out VVS Laxman in favour of Virender Sehwag. Less than a year ago, Laxman had scripted India's greatest performance, and broken Sunil Gavaskar's long-standing record for the highest individual Test score by an Indian batsman. Imperious, elegant, unruffled, he was a class apart. He was only 26 then, and it seemed that India had finally found a batsman who combined immense talent with a hunger for runs, a man who'd stand shoulder to shoulder with Sachin Tendulkar and steer India's fortunes for the rest of the decade.

Very Very Sadly, all he'll get to steer during this Test match is a drinks trolley. His exclusion is not entirely without logic; his Test average since that mammoth 281 has been 39.2, and Laxman's batting since then has been full of pretty little cameos that have been beautiful to watch, but have been all too short-lived. If a musical were to be made on what Laxman has done in the last year, it would feature a magnificent symphony followed by mere wisps of melody that the ear strained to catch.

Immense promise squandered has been a familiar theme in Indian cricket, the central note of a fugue that is all too tragic in nature; hell, almost elegiac. Sanjay Manjrekar, now a Wisden.com columnist, was a case in point – ten years ago, you would have thought he'd be captain of India in 2002. Maninder Singh is another one - he mysteriously got the yips a decade ago - as are many of the talented youngsters India have uncovered in the last couple of years. Players such as Yuvraj Singh, Hemang Badani and Ashish Nehra, who seem on the verge of burning out now after the briefest of flickers.

One factor all these men have had to deal with, and which Indian cricketers face to a greater degree of magnitude than players from other countries, is the weight of expectation. Laxman hasn't done all that badly in this time – an average of almost 40 would pass muster in every Test team apart from Australia – and he made a doughty 75 just two innings ago, in the second Test against England. He also averaged 50 in the tough tour of South Africa, the cornerstone of that performance being a mature knock of 89 at Port Elizabeth. But because expectations of him have risen so much after that 281, his otherwise-respectable record doesn't pass muster.

He also seems confused about what exactly is expected of him. He has been berated for batting irresponsibly in recent times, going for one stroke too many too soon, and throwing it away after getting a start. But that's exactly how he played his 281. He played his natural game, went for his strokes, and when he felt the ball was there to be hit, he gave it a whack. In that innings, it went like a dream: subsequently, the dream turned sour, as he was repeatedly castigated for playing in exactly the same way he'd done during the greatest innings by an Indian batsman. What a paradox.

This confusion would surely have been compounded by his demotion back down the order. It happened before the Port Elizabeth Test, when Sourav Ganguly backed out of opening the batting (as he was supposed to) at the last moment and Rahul Dravid objected to being made to come in at No. 6: Laxman was the fall guy. The team has been in constant turmoil ever since, and when Laxman got the sack for the one-dayers against England, the writing was on the wall.

Pity. India has a tough away series against West Indies coming up, and make no mistake, when the going gets tough again, India will need VVS. This would have been the ideal series in which to help him get his confidence back, to quietly pat him on the shoulder and tell him to go out there without any pressure, that the team management believed in him and would continue to do so. That opportunity has been squandered, and Laxman will be insecure about his place once again in the West Indies, and that uncertainty is bound to reflect in his play.

What is even more shocking, of course, is that the man who should have been dropped in this Test plays on, because he happens to captain the team. And Laxman gets the sack instead. Time for that elegy?

Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd