The pragmatic art of Virender Sehwag

He has reached an understanding with his own flaws, refused to compromise his strengths, and stayed true to himself

Ed Smith

November 21, 2012

The conventional definition of mental strength is much too narrow. Mental strength is not only about guts and determination, sacrifice and suffering. It is also about holding your nerve, about protecting your self-belief under criticism. It is about saying: "I know what works for me. Sometimes my style of play will look terrible. But over time, I will deliver. And I won't become like everyone else just to avoid criticism." That takes real guts, too. In fact, the justified refusal to compromise your strengths is the ultimate form of mental strength.

By that measure, Virender Sehwag has exceptional mental strength. As he approaches his 100th Test match, we will hear a lot about Sehwag's remarkable hand-eye coordination, his natural ball-striking, his gift of timing and power. But those strengths needed to be nurtured, to be protected from the many voices that demanded that Sehwag curb his natural instincts and play a different way. Sehwag mastered one of the hardest tricks in sport: he reached an accommodation with his own flaws. He recognised that he could not iron out his weaknesses without losing his voice. In simple terms, he stayed true to himself. The whole game is much richer because he did just that.

I first watched Sehwag when Kent played India in 2002. Even then, there was a lot of talk about what he couldn't do - that he couldn't resist going for his shots, that he got out too easily, that he didn't adapt. I noticed something different. It wasn't the way he hit the bad balls for four. It was the way he dispatched the good ones. The bowlers ran up and bowled on a length; Sehwag then drove those length balls for four, all along the ground, with very little apparent risk. Not many players can do that. It was a pattern that would be repeated for 100 Tests.

If Sehwag's mental resilience is underestimated, so is his technique - at least certain strands of his technique. What struck me that day in 2002 was the purity of his bat swing, how squarely the bat face met the ball on impact. And how often he middled the ball.

Isn't that, surely, a central component of a "good technique"? Yes, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar developed more sophisticated techniques that could adapt to difficult pitches. And adaptability, of course, is the ultimate gauge of the ideal all-round technique. But in terms of a technique that makes the best possible contact with a ball flying in a straight line at 85mph, I do not think I've seen a better one than Sehwag's. God-given talent alone - a good eye and fast hands - will not allow you to hit that many balls for four.

Cricket has long misunderstood technique. For too long, the word has been wrongly linked to obduracy and self-denial. Technique is simply a set of skills that allows you to respond to the challenges of your sport. It is as much about attacking options as watertight defence. It is Lionel Messi's exceptional technique, his control of the ball, that allows him to play with such flair for Barcelona. It is Roger Federer's basic technique that allows him to play such a dazzling array of shots from any part of the tennis court.

So it is with Sehwag. It is his technical mastery of attacking shots that puts extraordinary pressure on the bowler. I remember hearing from Stuart Clark when Australia were about to play the Rest of the World XI in 2005. "Just had a bowlers' meeting," Clark explained, "the area of the pitch we're supposed to land it on against Sehwag is about two millimetres by two millimetres!" A fraction full: expect to be driven for four. A fraction short: expect to be punched off the back foot for four.

Sehwag takes boundary hitting very seriously. It is a skill borne of deep attention to detail: you don't become so good at something without loving it. Many great batsmen sit in the dressing room talking about how the players in the middle are missing out on singles. Sehwag, apparently, pipes up when someone misses an attacking opportunity. "He missed a four!" he will say regretfully.

	In terms of a technique that makes the best possible contact with a ball flying in a straight line at 85mph, I do not think I've seen a better one than Sehwag's. God-given talent alone will not allow you to hit that many balls for four

He also knows which bowlers to target. Aakash Chopra recalls how ruthlessly Sehwag seized on the most vulnerable bowler. He knew exactly which bowlers he could destroy. That takes intelligence as well as self-awareness. And it is a huge benefit to the team. A batsman who can "knock out" one of the opposition's bowlers changes the whole balance of the match. If one bowler effectively cannot bowl when Sehwag is at the wicket, then the others tire much more quickly.

Like all great players, Sehwag developed a game that suited him. Dravid once told me that Brian Lara and Tendulkar were so talented that they could regularly score Test hundreds in three or four hours. But Dravid felt he had to be prepared to bat for more like five or six hours for his hundreds. Quite simply, in order to score as heavily as Lara and Tendulkar, Dravid thought he had to bat for more balls. Every batsman has to face up to a version of that calculation: what is my natural tempo, what is the appropriate amount of risk for my game?

But there are two sides to that equation. First, there is time. Secondly, there is run rate. Dravid calculated that he possessed the defensive technique and psychological skills to spend more time in the middle than most great players. So he would compromise on run rate and extend his occupation of the crease.

Sehwag asked the same question but reached the opposite conclusion. Instead of facing more balls, how about scoring more runs off the balls that he did face? Sehwag's judgement of his own game, just like Dravid's, has been fully vindicated by his record. Here is the crucial point. Sehwag's approach is not "reckless" or "naïve". It is deeply pragmatic.

Steve Waugh said that Sehwag is the ultimate "KISS" player: Keep It Simple, Stupid. But that is easier said than done. After a series of nicks to the slips, it would have been tempting for Sehwag completely to remodel his technique. But he had the courage to stick to his method and the conviction that when he got back on a pitch that suited him, he would make it pay. After a sparkling hundred in his 99th Test, Sehwag now reaches another century. He is looking to be proved right yet again.

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The limited-overs batsman 

who revolutionised Test 

cricket

Sehwag's ability to use skills seemingly made for ODIs in the long game, and his instinct and fearlessness make him one of cricket's most compelling sights

John Wright

November 22, 2012

 

	The great gamble of 2002: Sehwag gets off to a flier in his first innings as a Test opener, at Lord's © Getty Images Enlarge
Related Links Ed Smith : The pragmatic art of Virender Sehwag Players/Officials: Virender Sehwag Teams: India

Less than a year ago, I woke up on the morning of the second Test between Australia and New Zealand in Hobart with the news that Viru had become only the second man to a double-hundred in ODIs.

My first thought was, "About time."

To me, Virender Sehwag has been the most exciting player I've watched, bar none. Yes, I know I belong to the generation that played against Viv, but having seen more of Viru than Viv, that's where I come from.

With Viru, you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes his batting doesn't work, sometimes it can be frustrating. When it works, though, he shakes up a game and turns it on its head. In Hobart that day, I thought that had Viru batted in ODI cricket the way he did in Tests, he could have got five double-hundreds. Or more.

But it is in Test cricket that Viru has shown us his genius. He has revolutionised Test batting, changed the way people look at openers, and made such an impact on the game that the rafters shake when he gets going.

Viru's 99 Tests, like his batting, seem to have gone by at top speed. A hundred Tests is a telling number, but then so are two triple-centuries, a strike rate of above 80 in Tests, 8400 Test runs, and the aforementioned double-hundred (off 149 balls).

It is always hard to judge a player in his first Test, but by the time Viru had played about a dozen, I did think that he had it in him to become something. For his first 30-odd Tests, I worked with Viru as his coach and it was a sheer delight to see him grow.

He came into the team in the guise of this middle-order batsman who had grown up on Indian wickets who could smash it everywhere. In about two years and a bit, he became a world-class Test opener with powers feared by all opposition. Over the rest of his career, he has become one of the greatest openers in the history of the game. People don't normally ever do that - go from being a middle-order batsman in India to opening in Test match cricket and producing outstanding performances all over the world.

What Viru was able to do was play tricks on cricket's very framework. If middle-order batsmen are asked to open the innings, they go into existential dilemmas, modify their game, work on technique. Many fail, a few cope. You will have heard all those stories.

Viru was different; he had no such crisis. He opened in Tests the way he had batted in the middle order - still smashing it. He didn't redefine his game because of his batting position. He redefined the position with his batting. I do not use the word genius casually.

I first met Viru in 2000, when he joined the squad to play the one-dayers against Zimbabwe, my first full series as coach of India. He looked a lovely kid - shy, with a mischievous smile, still innocent and wide-eyed, like many of the young Indians coming into the side.

Three months later, he made me sit up when he scored 58 against Australia in the Bangalore ODI. It was an innings of timing and confidence against bowlers like McGrath and Warne. We moved him into the opening slot in ODIs in a tri-series in Sri Lanka for two reasons: we had opening problems, and Viru kept getting out trying to slog the spinners in the middle overs. He nailed opening the batting beautifully - with it, he solved our problems and found he could play his game at its fullest. It should have been a different matter in Tests.

In Test matches he had a reasonable start as a No. 6, with a century on debut in South Africa and two fifties. We were struggling with Test openers and Sourav and I decided to gamble by sticking him in at the top of the order at Lord's, in only his sixth Test.

When we talked to him about the job, he didn't look like he was too worried about opening. He certainly didn't express it to me (and we had begun to speak very freely to each other by then). In his first innings as a Test opener, Viru was the team's top scorer, with 84. Then, when I saw him on a green wicket in Trent Bridge, in the second Test, I thought, "This guy is serious." He got a century and didn't look back.

Viru's coach in Delhi taught him to have a beautiful, straight backlift, so when he defends he is nicely straight and late. His attacking game wasn't too bad either. He could play so late and generate such bat speed that if you were a few inches off target on the off side, the ball was gone. Anything a bit straight was whipped through midwicket. He could also use the pace of the ball to score more effectively than most in the area between point and third man.

Early on, we widened his stance a little, and I used to encourage him to keep his head very still and not let it move sideways. When his head is perfectly still, like with any batsman, it allows him to play his late options and makes the most of his sublime balance. He is a great opener, though, because, along with everything else, he is fearless.

	One of the things that I think helped him find his feet in cricket and stay grounded was that he accepted his fate. If he nicked something, he accepted it and wouldn't worry about it

Maybe he enjoys opening because he goes out to a clean slate. There are no wickets down, there's no responsibility like there would be coming in at six with four down. He goes in without any numbers and can do what he has said he does: see the ball, hit the ball. In a game filled with jargon and technique and dissection, it is like Viru knows why the great baseball catcher and manager Yogi Berra made total sense when he said: "How can you think and hit at the same time?"

Viru's instinct sweeps him away, and it is what makes him an attacking batsman. At a basic level, he must sense that instinct is swifter and more accurate than thought. Thought gets in the way. When batsmen are playing well, everyone goes by instinct, but Viru had that coupled with intrinsic fearlessness. It doesn't matter what the game situation is, who is bowling, what the wicket is doing. He sees the ball and he hits it - for four if he can.

As captain, batting partner or coach, it is best not to get in his way or try to complicate him. It would ruin Virender Sehwag. He is a natural in more ways than one.

He is one of the best balanced players I've seen. Plus, he catches like he is picking apples, and in those endless beep (fitness) tests we put the team through, he would turn on a dime. He was effortless at changing direction and caught everyone on the turn.

One of the other things that I think helped him find his feet in cricket and stay grounded was that he accepted his fate. If he nicked something, he accepted it and wouldn't worry about it. It was not that he didn't experience disappointment or didn't care, but he wasn't someone who beat himself up too much. What was over was over and he would start his next innings.

I don't know if that is what you call fatalism. Once, we flew into Melbourne in a storm and the plane was getting tossed around a little. He took one look at my face - I'm not the best of fliers - and started laughing. "What're you laughing at?" I asked him, and he said, "Relax, John, if the plane goes down, it goes down. There's nothing we can do about it." It didn't make me a better flier but it told me a little more about Viru.

The only thing that frustrated me, and that had me get stuck into him, was that for the team's sake, there were times when he needed to rein it in a little. But I knew that too much of that could ruin him. People talk about our little incident at The Oval, when I upbraided him. I made an example of Viru because I wanted the rest of the boys to understand that you have to adapt your play to the team's need to win the match.

We sorted that out later, and to his credit, he got over it and we remained mates. After we won the series in Pakistan in 2004, he insisted that I be part of the awards ceremony. I tended to avoid them because the limelight and celebration, I thought, belonged to the players. Viru had noticed this. After the victory he put his arm around my shoulder. "This time, John," he said, "you're coming with me", and dragged me down the stairs of the Rawalpindi dressing room to be with the team.

Viru is the only player I've watched who has pulled off a game suited for ODIs in Test cricket. If he had played ODIs like he played Test matches, he would have had much more success. In ODI cricket, I think he tries to up the tempo when he doesn't need to; he has already pushed the envelope as far as it can go.

Today he is 34, a senior player, a father, and not the cheeky kid I first met, though his smile still seems to contains its old mischief. I would love to believe that he has a lot of good cricket left in him, but all batsmen know that when they get to around 35, they have to work doubly hard on their fitness. It's not going to get easier but he can keep going for as long as he loves the game and trusts his instincts.

On his 100th Test, I would like to say to him: very well played Viru and thanks for the entertainment. Remember, though, that what we talked about still stands - that it's not enough to have big scores; the great ones are those who get the big scores consistently.

John Wright coached India and New Zealand and played 82 Tests for the latter

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