Sehwag proves a point, three times over
Posted on Mar 28, 2008 at 19:01 | Updated Mar 28, 2008 at 20:58
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Tags: cricket, india, sehwag
Chennai: When we first saw Virender Sehwag, he was a teenager, with curly hair and a very innocent outlook of the world. Things have changed. The curls have vanished, Sehwag has grown taller, though not much, has picked up weight, some say too much, and has a much more cynical expression on his face.
One thing has not changed though – he still swings the bat like a bludgeon.
Time teaches people to be wiser, more careful, and even to be a bit afraid. Sehwag has learnt all that, and adapted whatever suited him. What he cannot learn is to be circumspect as a batsman.
This has resulted in a lot of criticism, especially last year, when there was a definite chance that he would be out of the team for a long time. His fitness was being questioned, and not without reason, since he seemed to have lost whatever little agility he had. With the bat too, his careless abandon had transformed into callousness, with a touch of defiance.
That is the worst combination when it comes to playing cricket in India, and people get impatient. The axe had to come, and did.
But even the players agree that a stint out of the team can be great for them, since a lot of distractions and misconceptions are taken care of. They suddenly realise that they, outside of the team, are mortals like all else, so the place in the team has to be cherished and preserved. The only way to do that is perform. Virender Sehwag has done that.
"I was really hurt when I was dropped for the Pakistan series. Maybe it was good for me as it motivated me. I had to prove that I belong," he said after the day's play. "So I had to concentrate on batting to get a big score, and prove I was a better Test player than that.
"I wanted to prove that I belong," he said. And boy, did he or what!
It is almost unbelievable how Sehwag hits the ball. It is an act that is fraught with danger, and frequently Sehwag has been dismissed playing shots, which have been injudicious, at least in hindsight.
But when he does succeed, it's a thing of amazement.
Just look at these statistics: Of the 14 centuries that Sehwag has scored, the last ten, consecutively, have been over 150! Not one other batsman in cricket can boast of such a distinction.
This essentially means that his conversion rate is phenomenal. Of the last ten 100-plus innings, he now has two triple hundreds, two double-centuries, a score of 195, the minimum being 151.
So is 400 out of the realms of possibility? "I'll think about it if I'm batting till lunch tomorrow," Sehwag replies.
Playing the way he did at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Friday, nothing is impossible.
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