He just loves to belt the ball

Published : Dec 06, 2008 00:00 IST

S. SUBRAMANIUM
S. SUBRAMANIUM
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S. SUBRAMANIUM

Virender Sehwag has powered India ahead with ballistic starts that have left rival captains short of breath and bereft of ideas. Kevin Pietersen, the captain of the England team which bore the brunt of the opener’s assault in the ODI series recently, doffed his hat to the Indian, saying “He is a special player. A superstar.” By K.C. Vijaya Kumar.

He is a force-multiplier landing blows right at the top. Over the years, Virender Sehwag has redefined Indian batting with a bludgeoning style that forces bowlers to think in terms of filing cases against the opener for causing trauma!

Sehwag has powered India ahead with ballistic starts that have left rival captains short of breath and bereft of ideas. Kevin Pietersen said: “He is a special player. A superstar.” The England captain has seen Sehwag crunch into his bowlers with scores of 85, 1, 68, 69 and 91 in the recent seven-match ODI series that was shortened to five matches following the terror strikes in Mumbai.

Sehwag’s blitz that helped him go past 6000 runs in one-day internationals was critical to India emerging winners by a 5-0 margin though Yuvraj Singh’s prolific run, Zaheer Khan’s craft, Harbhajan Singh’s guile and skipper M. S. Dhoni’s calm under duress were all key ingredients in India’s dominance.

Sehwag’s blitzkrieg opened up new flanks for the rest of the batting to tuck into. Sluggish starts while batting first and mounting asking rates during the chase are factors that often strangle teams. But Sehwag’s knocks right through the series ensured that the middle-order, basking in Yuvraj’s red-hot form, had enough overs to post huge totals or knock down the winning runs.

Sehwag’s total of 314 runs with an average of 62.80 and a strike-rate of 110.95 in the ODI series against England proved to be a double whammy in association with Yuvraj’s 325 and a strike rate of 129.48. Sehwag, the match-winner, is 30 and his career might be in for another surge, just like his effortless clouts over mid-wicket.

However, his career has not been a consistent script of debut followed by consolidation. Sehwag set a breathless pace in Tests, which he struggled to keep pace with in ODIs. It was strange considering that he was a batsman who loved to hit on the rise, through the line and strike hard against the new ball bowlers. He also relished the two-steps-down-and-slam routine against the spinners. If these methods were effective in Tests, they had to come good in ODIs too, but they didn’t and that affected him.

There was a phase post-2004 January when his batting slumped in limited-overs cricket though it remained largely bright in Tests. Given the rate at which batsmen change over between Tests and ODIs due to packed international schedules, they feed on the confidence gained from one form of cricket and try to replicate it in the other. So, as the runs in ODIs dwindled, his form in Tests too dipped during the last phase of Greg Chappell’s tenure as India’s coach. Sehwag rushed his shots and the ball inevitably found the edge or sneaked in to signal his trudge back to the pavilion.

He was dropped from the Test squad that toured Bangladesh close on the heels of India’s World Cup debacle in the West Indies in 2007. Sehwag also missed India’s tour of England as he was left to ponder and plunder runs in the domestic circuit. He was not even in the list of probables for the Australian tour, but when Niranjan Shah, the BCCI secretary then, announced Sehwag’s name in the Indian team, there was a mini stampede as television journalists rushed out of the conference hall in Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Stadium to break the news.

Anil Kumble had backed Sehwag and the opener lived up to his captain’s faith. As a player, who relied on hand-eye co-ordination and terrific bat speed, Sehwag needed a mix of self-belief, the team think-tank’s support and the odd streak of luck. And when all these fell into place, his comeback story was truly on.

A 29 and 43 in India’s stunning victory in the Perth Test was followed by a 63 and 151 in Adelaide — Sehwag’s rehabilitation was almost complete. But there was the small matter of cementing his place in the ODI team. Sehwag wobbled with 71 runs from five innings in the Commonwealth Bank Series in Australia. India’s ODI skipper M. S. Dhoni seemed too rigid on the youth quotient in Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma as Sehwag flitted between shadow and sunshine.

However, things changed from the Kitply Cup in Dhaka this year and since then Sehwag has scored 812 runs from 13 matches at an average of 62.46. In between, he scored a triple hundred against the visiting South Africans and a double century in Sri Lanka as his glorious run in Tests continued.

So what changed a failure’s whispers into a hearty laughter of runs?

“I have not changed the way I bat. Coach Gary Kirsten asked me to understand the bowlers in the initial overs,” Sehwag said. Kirsten’s breathe-easy-before-you-blow-the-opposition-away mantra has worked wonders for Sehwag.

It largely helped that Sehwag had Gautam Gambhir as his opening partner. The fact that Gambhir is a southpaw and is shorter than Sehwag forces bowlers to constantly alter their lengths and angles. To make matters worse for the opposition, Sehwag and Gambhir, who also open for Delhi, have a good understanding while running between the wickets.

Sehwag, who likes width around his off-stump, has become equally adept at moving a shade across and getting his runs on the leg-side. A few chinks remain though as Andrew Flintoff showed when he darted a few deliveries towards Sehwag’s chest that cramped him and left him unsure about his options. However, he is too clever and can iron out these glitches.

Add to Sehwag’s explosive batting his handy off-spin, with which he has scalped 84 ODI wickets, and a safe pair of hands, and you have a player who seems set for greater glory. The Indian team’s vice-captain with 5508 Test runs and an ODI tally of 6124 runs, seems to have added consistency to his proven mettle. Bad news for the harried bowlers’ union!

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