Controlled aggression at its finest |
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Saturday March 29, 01:19 AM
Chennai, March 28: Virender Sehwag elevated himself from a batting galactico to a permanent place in the pantheon of Indian batting demigods. The transformation from a swashbuckling dazzler to a senior Test batsman with a genuine claim to be one of the greats of Indian cricket that began at the Adelaide Oval was completed at Chepauk. He went further to join Sir Donald Bradman and Brian Lara as the only batsmen to have crossed the 300-run mark twice in Tests.
As a batsman Sehwag used to be as Indian as spices and curry, great to watch but as equally exasperating when he threw it away. In his last two Test innings, he has shown that he is a completely changed man, almost like a profligate playboy getting religion. He has switched from trysting with dame fortune as in dabbling in strokes with minuscule success percentage to a maestro delivering a performance based on the soundest fundamentals.
With full sleeves elegantly stretched to under his batting gloves to keep the unremitting sun out, he looks the picture of a master who knows all the nuances of batsmanship. Not once in the third fastest double century of all time in terms of number of balls faced did he seem ruffled. No ball could be said to have truly passed his bat; none that actually beat an aimed extravagant stroke.
Many of his early savage innings may have seemed like dream highlights out of a television producer’s collection. In this exemplary knock marked by self discipline, he was the epitome of a batsman who had captured all the arts and graces of batsmanship. And yet he could at will recall the fiercest strokes out of his armoury, as when tearing Harris into ribbons, or blasting Ntini over covers as if he were a bowler who had strayed into the big league by accident.
It is possible to argue that praise of Indian batting by Indian critics may be based on an acquired taste. Not that the world’s greats are any less when comes to batting. What the Indians give to the art is a spicy flavour, a wristy twist as it were, clever tap past slip, a different way of doing things as in producing dinky strokes played with a dainty touch, and even demonstrating the ability to play the not so elegant reverse sweep while making it look quite legitimate.
While Ranji, the first of the Indian greats in the international game, was said not to have played a Christian stroke in his life, Sehwag presents a combination of the Oriental touch and an Occidental power. He can seem one minute to be the very antithesis of the Asian batsman in driving flat sixes through extra cover and he can be the stereotypical Indian the next, wristily flicking to leg.
So dominant a figure was Sehwag on the third day that he seemed to be in a completely different class from whoever had batted before him in the Test and whoever batted with him. In terms of runs in an innings, he had only himself to beat anyway with his 309 at Multan. That he equalled without fuss in the last over, as calm a figure at the end of such a day as he was when he came in to bat late on Thursday.
In Adelaide he proved that it is not only in figures that he should be measured. He saved the Test for India there while out here he has already ensured the same thing with the additional promise of putting his side well ahead of the clock to open up the possibility of trying to win a Test. That is Sehwag for you, the controlled aggressor who has come to terms with his own greatness in two gems of Test innings back to back.
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