Showing posts with label sehwag. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sehwag. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 July 2023
Thursday, 2 April 2020
Was Greg Chappell really a terrible coach of India?
Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters writes Karthik Krishnaswamy in Cricinfo
The leaked email, the crowd that cheered the opposition, the punch at an airport: Greg Chappell's tumultuous, two-year tenure as India's head coach contains every ingredient you could wish for if you're writing cricket's version of The Damned Utd, the David Peace novel - later adapted into a movie - that tried to get inside Brian Clough's head during his ill-fated, 44-day spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974.
Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters. The coach was one of the game's great batsmen and enigmas, upright and elegant but also cold and sneering, a man who once made his brother bowl underarm to kill a one-day game. This man takes over a team of superstars and attempts, perhaps hastily and certainly without a great deal of diplomacy, to remake them in his own image. He precipitates the removal of a long-serving captain who commands a great deal of adoration within the dressing room, and challenges other senior players to break out of their comfort zones without preparing, perhaps, for the inevitable resistance. There are successes, but there's one massive, glaring failure, and with that the entire project comes crashing down.
If you wrote it well, there wouldn't be heroes or villains, just the universal story of proud and insecure men trying and failing to connect with each other. But it hasn't usually been told that way, certainly not in India, where Chappell remains a hugely polarising figure.
Of those who played under him, most of the prominent voices who have written or spoken about Chappell have had almost nothing good to say of him - Sourav Ganguly, needless to say, but others too. Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag have all stuck the knife in at various points, and all of them have laid one major charge at Chappell's feet, that he was a poor man-manager.
"Greg," Tendulkar wrote in his book Playing It My Way, "was like a ringmaster who imposed his ideas on the players without showing any signs of being concerned about whether they felt comfortable or not."
Perhaps there's some truth to the idea that Chappell didn't know how to get the best out of a diverse group of players, and that he lacked the instinct to be able to tell whom to cajole and whom to kick up the backside. But while one group of players has been unsparingly critical of Chappell's methods, other prominent voices - Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, and above all Rahul Dravid - have largely stayed silent on the matter. Irfan Pathan has rejected, on multiple occasions, the widely held notion that Chappell was responsible for his decline as a swing bowler after a promising start to his career. Pathan was one of a group of younger players heavily backed by Chappell, alongside Yuvraj, Dhoni (whose leadership potential Chappell was one of the first to spot) and Suresh Raina.
Of course, players are the last people you would go to for a dispassionate appraisal of their coach's ideas and methods. If Chappell wanted Zaheer Khan dropped, you wouldn't ask Zaheer Khan if he thought it was a good idea. You wouldn't ask Harbhajan or Sehwag, two players whose early careers Ganguly had a major influence on, whether it was right to strip him of the captaincy.
Let's look, therefore, at some numbers.
The Ganguly question is the easiest to answer. Chappell put forward the idea that he step down from the captaincy during India's tour of Zimbabwe in September 2005. From the start of 2001 to that point, Ganguly had averaged 34.01 in 61 Test innings against all teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
Excluding matches against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the Associates, his ODI numbers in the same period were just as poor: an average of 30.71, a strike rate of 72.32. Since the start of 2003, he had fared even worse against the top eight ODI teams: 1077 runs in 45 matches at an average of 25.04 and a strike rate of 67.39.
There were performance-related issues behind other players' disagreements with Chappell too. Take Khan, for instance. From the end of the Brisbane Test of December 2003, where he bagged a first-innings five-for, to the Karachi Test of January-February 2006, he took 39 wickets in 15 Tests at 42.41. In that Karachi Test and right through that tour of Pakistan, he was visibly pudgy, bowled off a short run-up, and struggled to move the speedometer needle past the 130kph mark.
Khan's fitness - and Sehwag's - had always been a sticking point with Chappell. Left out of India's next two Test series - against England at home and in the West Indies - Khan signed for Worcestershire and enjoyed a tremendous county season, during which he grew fitter and rediscovered his bowling form. He was a rejuvenated force when he returned to Test cricket on the 2006-07 tour of South Africa, and Chappell, writing in his book Fierce Focus, noted that Khan and Ganguly - who was also making a comeback - were two of India's best players on that tour. "Whether they had improved in order to spite me or prove me right, I didn't care. It cheered me greatly to see them in much better shape than they had been when I started in the job."
In ODIs, India were a poor chasing team when Chappell arrived - their last 20 completed chases before he took over had brought them just five wins, four of those against Zimbabwe or Bangladesh - and they realised the best way to become better at it was to keep doing it. They kept choosing to bowl when they won the toss, and eventually became so good at chasing that they won 17 successive matches batting second.
Before Chappell and Dravid joined forces, India had been hugely reluctant to play five bowlers even when conditions demanded it. Under them, it became a routine occurrence. India were lucky, perhaps, to have an allrounder who made it possible, but it's a telling statistic that the highest Pathan batted in 32 ODIs under Ganguly was No. 7, and that was just once, though he scored two half-centuries from those positions and regularly showed promise with the bat. Dravid regularly used Pathan at No. 3, suggesting either that this was his idea in the first place, or that he was far more willing than Ganguly to take on board one of Chappell's. (Pathan himself has suggested it was Tendulkar's idea.)![]()
While one group of players has been critical of Chappell's methods, the likes of Dravid largely stayed silent Getty Images
Under Chappell and Dravid, India often played five bowlers in Test cricket too, showing a willingness to risk losing in order to take 20 wickets and win games. It meant leaving out the sixth batsman, and while Ganguly was the first casualty, the rise of Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif as ODI regulars knocking hard on the Test door put a bit of pressure on Laxman as well. He was left out of two home Tests against England in 2006, and also had to move up and down the order a fair bit, especially if the batsman left out was one of the regular openers.
This led to the insecurities that Laxman has since expressed in his book, 281 and Beyond, and Chappell, perhaps, didn't do enough to allay them. Chappell admits this failing himself in Fierce Focus, calling his mistakes the "same kinds […] I'd made as captain in my playing days. I didn't communicate my plans well enough to the senior players. I should have let guys like Tendulkar, Laxman and Sehwag know that although I was an agent of change, they were still part of our Test cricket future."
That old man-management thing again. But there was nothing fundamentally wrong with asking a senior player to occasionally sit out games or bat in unfamiliar positions, in order to execute a larger plan for the team's good.
Playing five bowlers, being willing to leave out established players, making fitness a non-negotiable, encouraging players to come out of their comfort zones: if the broad ideas of the Chappell-Dravid era, and the tensions that came out of implementing them, seem eerily familiar, it's because you've seen it all happen - though probably allied with better communication - under Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli. And that, perhaps, is Chappell's biggest legacy.
Great coaches can get entire teams to buy in to their ideas, and even they - as Clough showed, either side of his Leeds misadventure, at Derby County and Nottingham Forest - need to be at the right place at the right time. Chappell and the India of 2005-07 weren't necessarily made for each other, and the early exit from the 2007 World Cup made that relationship untenable. It may not have lasted too much longer than that in any case, given the breakdown of trust within the dressing room that Chappell contributed to with his tendency to air his criticisms of players to the media.
There isn't a huge deal of evidence from the rest of his coaching career to suggest Chappell had the makings of a great coach anyway. But good ideas are good ideas, no matter how well they're communicated, and Indian cricket continues to benefit from the ones he left behind.
The leaked email, the crowd that cheered the opposition, the punch at an airport: Greg Chappell's tumultuous, two-year tenure as India's head coach contains every ingredient you could wish for if you're writing cricket's version of The Damned Utd, the David Peace novel - later adapted into a movie - that tried to get inside Brian Clough's head during his ill-fated, 44-day spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974.
Chappell and India. You can't ask for a more compelling plot or cast of characters. The coach was one of the game's great batsmen and enigmas, upright and elegant but also cold and sneering, a man who once made his brother bowl underarm to kill a one-day game. This man takes over a team of superstars and attempts, perhaps hastily and certainly without a great deal of diplomacy, to remake them in his own image. He precipitates the removal of a long-serving captain who commands a great deal of adoration within the dressing room, and challenges other senior players to break out of their comfort zones without preparing, perhaps, for the inevitable resistance. There are successes, but there's one massive, glaring failure, and with that the entire project comes crashing down.
If you wrote it well, there wouldn't be heroes or villains, just the universal story of proud and insecure men trying and failing to connect with each other. But it hasn't usually been told that way, certainly not in India, where Chappell remains a hugely polarising figure.
Of those who played under him, most of the prominent voices who have written or spoken about Chappell have had almost nothing good to say of him - Sourav Ganguly, needless to say, but others too. Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag have all stuck the knife in at various points, and all of them have laid one major charge at Chappell's feet, that he was a poor man-manager.
"Greg," Tendulkar wrote in his book Playing It My Way, "was like a ringmaster who imposed his ideas on the players without showing any signs of being concerned about whether they felt comfortable or not."
Perhaps there's some truth to the idea that Chappell didn't know how to get the best out of a diverse group of players, and that he lacked the instinct to be able to tell whom to cajole and whom to kick up the backside. But while one group of players has been unsparingly critical of Chappell's methods, other prominent voices - Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, and above all Rahul Dravid - have largely stayed silent on the matter. Irfan Pathan has rejected, on multiple occasions, the widely held notion that Chappell was responsible for his decline as a swing bowler after a promising start to his career. Pathan was one of a group of younger players heavily backed by Chappell, alongside Yuvraj, Dhoni (whose leadership potential Chappell was one of the first to spot) and Suresh Raina.
Of course, players are the last people you would go to for a dispassionate appraisal of their coach's ideas and methods. If Chappell wanted Zaheer Khan dropped, you wouldn't ask Zaheer Khan if he thought it was a good idea. You wouldn't ask Harbhajan or Sehwag, two players whose early careers Ganguly had a major influence on, whether it was right to strip him of the captaincy.
Let's look, therefore, at some numbers.
The Ganguly question is the easiest to answer. Chappell put forward the idea that he step down from the captaincy during India's tour of Zimbabwe in September 2005. From the start of 2001 to that point, Ganguly had averaged 34.01 in 61 Test innings against all teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
Excluding matches against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the Associates, his ODI numbers in the same period were just as poor: an average of 30.71, a strike rate of 72.32. Since the start of 2003, he had fared even worse against the top eight ODI teams: 1077 runs in 45 matches at an average of 25.04 and a strike rate of 67.39.
There were performance-related issues behind other players' disagreements with Chappell too. Take Khan, for instance. From the end of the Brisbane Test of December 2003, where he bagged a first-innings five-for, to the Karachi Test of January-February 2006, he took 39 wickets in 15 Tests at 42.41. In that Karachi Test and right through that tour of Pakistan, he was visibly pudgy, bowled off a short run-up, and struggled to move the speedometer needle past the 130kph mark.
Khan's fitness - and Sehwag's - had always been a sticking point with Chappell. Left out of India's next two Test series - against England at home and in the West Indies - Khan signed for Worcestershire and enjoyed a tremendous county season, during which he grew fitter and rediscovered his bowling form. He was a rejuvenated force when he returned to Test cricket on the 2006-07 tour of South Africa, and Chappell, writing in his book Fierce Focus, noted that Khan and Ganguly - who was also making a comeback - were two of India's best players on that tour. "Whether they had improved in order to spite me or prove me right, I didn't care. It cheered me greatly to see them in much better shape than they had been when I started in the job."
In ODIs, India were a poor chasing team when Chappell arrived - their last 20 completed chases before he took over had brought them just five wins, four of those against Zimbabwe or Bangladesh - and they realised the best way to become better at it was to keep doing it. They kept choosing to bowl when they won the toss, and eventually became so good at chasing that they won 17 successive matches batting second.
Before Chappell and Dravid joined forces, India had been hugely reluctant to play five bowlers even when conditions demanded it. Under them, it became a routine occurrence. India were lucky, perhaps, to have an allrounder who made it possible, but it's a telling statistic that the highest Pathan batted in 32 ODIs under Ganguly was No. 7, and that was just once, though he scored two half-centuries from those positions and regularly showed promise with the bat. Dravid regularly used Pathan at No. 3, suggesting either that this was his idea in the first place, or that he was far more willing than Ganguly to take on board one of Chappell's. (Pathan himself has suggested it was Tendulkar's idea.)
Under Chappell and Dravid, India often played five bowlers in Test cricket too, showing a willingness to risk losing in order to take 20 wickets and win games. It meant leaving out the sixth batsman, and while Ganguly was the first casualty, the rise of Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif as ODI regulars knocking hard on the Test door put a bit of pressure on Laxman as well. He was left out of two home Tests against England in 2006, and also had to move up and down the order a fair bit, especially if the batsman left out was one of the regular openers.
This led to the insecurities that Laxman has since expressed in his book, 281 and Beyond, and Chappell, perhaps, didn't do enough to allay them. Chappell admits this failing himself in Fierce Focus, calling his mistakes the "same kinds […] I'd made as captain in my playing days. I didn't communicate my plans well enough to the senior players. I should have let guys like Tendulkar, Laxman and Sehwag know that although I was an agent of change, they were still part of our Test cricket future."
That old man-management thing again. But there was nothing fundamentally wrong with asking a senior player to occasionally sit out games or bat in unfamiliar positions, in order to execute a larger plan for the team's good.
Playing five bowlers, being willing to leave out established players, making fitness a non-negotiable, encouraging players to come out of their comfort zones: if the broad ideas of the Chappell-Dravid era, and the tensions that came out of implementing them, seem eerily familiar, it's because you've seen it all happen - though probably allied with better communication - under Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli. And that, perhaps, is Chappell's biggest legacy.
Great coaches can get entire teams to buy in to their ideas, and even they - as Clough showed, either side of his Leeds misadventure, at Derby County and Nottingham Forest - need to be at the right place at the right time. Chappell and the India of 2005-07 weren't necessarily made for each other, and the early exit from the 2007 World Cup made that relationship untenable. It may not have lasted too much longer than that in any case, given the breakdown of trust within the dressing room that Chappell contributed to with his tendency to air his criticisms of players to the media.
There isn't a huge deal of evidence from the rest of his coaching career to suggest Chappell had the makings of a great coach anyway. But good ideas are good ideas, no matter how well they're communicated, and Indian cricket continues to benefit from the ones he left behind.
Thursday, 13 October 2016
The numbers behind dropped catches and missed stumpings
Charles Davis in Cricinfo
For all its bewildering array of data, cricket statistics still has a few blind spots. One of the most obvious is in the area of missed chances, where there have been few extensive studies. Gerald Brodribb in Next Man In mentioned that statistician RH Campbell estimated that 30% of catches were missed in Tests in the 1920s. I have seen a figure of more than 30 dropped catches by West Indies in Australia in 1968-69, a team plagued by poor fielding. But really basic questions like "Overall, what percentage of chances are dropped?" lack answers.
For a number of years I have collected all the missed chances I could find in ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball texts for Test matches. Since the site does not always use standard terms to describe missed chances, and different ball-by-ball commentators have their own ways of expressing themselves, I searched the text for 40 or more words and phrases that might indicate a miss, from "drop" and "dolly" to "shell", "grass" and "hash". The process generally flagged about 100 to 200 lines in the commentary for each Test, which I then searched manually to identify real chances. For some Tests, I also confirmed data by checking match reports and other ball-by-ball sources.
While the commentary goes back to 1999, the textual detail can be patchy in the early years. I logged missed chances from late 2000 onwards, but consider that data to be substantially complete only from 2003. I have compiled a list of over 4000 missed chances in Tests from this century; about a third of all Tests (635) are represented.
Unavoidably, there are caveats. Sometimes opinions may vary as to whether a chance should be considered a miss. I take a hard line: "half", "technical" and "academic" chances are included, and I try to include any chances where the fielder failed to touch the ball but should have done so, if they can be identified. Edges passing between the wicketkeeper and first slip are considered chances even if no one has touched the ball. Since 2005, I have divided chances into two categories, "normal" and "difficult", according to how they are described. About half fall into each category.
There will always be uncertainty about some dropped catches, as there is always the possibility that some others have been overlooked. However, as long as the collection method is as consistent and exhaustive as possible, I would argue that a great majority of misses have been identified and that the data can be collated into useful statistics.
So back to the original question: how many chances are dropped? The answer is about one-quarter; typically seven missed chances per Test. Here is a table showing missed chances by country.
The difference between the top three countries in the last five years is not significant; however, there are more substantial differences down the list. Generally, Bangladesh have had the weakest catching record since they started in Test cricket, although there are recent signs of improvement. Other countries have had fluctuating fortunes. West Indies had a miss rate of over 30% from 2003 to 2009, but have tightened up their game in the last couple of years. India have seen a rate of 33% in 2013 fall to 23% in 2015, and Sri Lanka have also improved their catching significantly in just the last two years.
In some years, countries like Australia, South Africa and New Zealand have seen their rates drop below 20%; the best single-year result was 16.9% by South Africa in 2013, when they were the No. 1-ranked team in Tests. In good years, the proportion of dropped catches rated as "difficult" generally increases; good teams still miss the hard ones but drop fewer easy ones. Typically, two-thirds of Australia's missed chances are rated as difficult, but the same applies to only one-third of Bangladesh's missed chances.
The lucky
As a batsman's innings progresses, the odds of him offering a chance increase. About 72% of batsmen reaching 50 do so without giving a chance, but the percentage for century-makers is 56% in the first 100 runs. Only 33% of double-centuries are chanceless in the first 200 runs. The highest absolutely chanceless innings is 374 by Mahela Jayawardene in Colombo; Lara's 400 in Antigua contained a couple of "academic" chances.
The most expensive missed chance since the start of 2000 is 297 runs for Inzamam-ul-Haq, who made 329 after being missed on 32 in Lahore in 2002. Historically there have been more expensive misses: Mark Taylor (334 not out) was dropped on 18 and 27 by Saeed Anwar, and there was a missed stumping on 40 for Len Hutton (364) in 1938. Perhaps even luckier was Kumar Sangakkara, who made 270 in Bulawayo after being dropped on 0. Sachin Tendulkar was dropped on 0 when he made his highest score, 248 not out in Dhaka. Mike Hussey gave a possible chance first ball at the Gabba in 2010, and went on to make 195. Graham Gooch was famously dropped by Kiran More when on 36 at Lord's in 1990. He went on to make 333.
The data turns up four batsmen who have been dropped five times in an innings: one was Andy Blignaut, whose 84 not out in Harare in 2005 included an extremely rare hat-trick of dropped catches; Zaheer Khan was the unhappy bowler. (There was also a hat-trick of missed chances at Old Trafford in 1972, when two batsmen survived against Geoff Arnold.) The others who have been missed five times are Hashim Amla (253 in Nagpur, 2010), Taufeeq Umar (135 in St Kitts, 2011) and Kane Williamson (242 not out in Wellington, 2014). Nothing in this century quite matches the seven or eight missed catches (reports vary) off George Bonnor when he made 87 in Sydney in 1883, or six misses off Bill Ponsford in his 266 at The Oval in 1934 (as recorded by veteran scorer Bill Ferguson). Wavell Hinds was dropped twice at the MCG in 2000, and still made a duck.
The batsman with most reprieves in the study period is Virender Sehwag, missed 68 times, just one ahead of Sangakkara. About 37% of the chances Sehwag offered were dropped, which is well above average and probably a testament to the power of his hitting.
The unlucky
Broadly, spin bowlers suffer more from dropped catches and (of course) missed stumpings. Chances at short leg, along with caught and bowled, have the highest miss rates among fielding positions, and these positions happen to feature more strongly among spinners' wickets than pace bowlers'. Overall, 27% of chances off spin bowlers are missed, as against 23% of chances off pace bowlers.
In the study period, the bowlers with the most missed chances in Tests are Harbhajan Singh (99) and Danish Kaneria (93). Harbhajan has had 26 chances missed at short leg alone. Bear in mind that these bowlers' careers are not fully covered; the data for about 10% of Harbhajan's career is not available to analyse. Pace bowlers with the most misses, as of January 2016, are Jimmy Anderson (89) and Stuart Broad (85).
Spare a thought for James Tredwell, who has played only two Tests but suffered ten missed chances, including seven on debut, the most for any bowler since the start of 2000. Most were very difficult, with three of them missed by the bowler himself. Also worth mentioning is Zulfiqar Babar, who has had 30 chances missed in his Test career and only 28 catches (and stumpings) taken.
At the other end of the scale, Adil Rashid has had eight catches taken off his bowling with no misses (as of August 2016). Neil Wagner of New Zealand has had only seven misses out of 63 chances, a rate of 11%.
Two bowlers have had catches missed off their first ball in Test cricket: David Warner (Dean Brownlie dropped by James Pattinson, Brisbane, 2011) and RP Singh (Shoaib Malik dropped by Anil Kumble, Faisalabad, 2006).
There is an intriguing case from 1990. Against West Indies in Lahore, Wasim Akram took four wickets in five balls: W, W, 1, W, W. In a surviving scorebook, the single, by Ian Bishop, is marked as a dropped catch at mid-on. If so, Akram came within a hair's breadth of five wickets in five balls, since the batsmen crossed, and Bishop did not face again. (Wisden, it should be noted, says that the catch was out of reach.)
The guilty
When it comes to catching, some positions are much more challenging than others. That will come as no surprise, but putting some numbers to this is an interesting exercise. The table below shows the miss rate for different field positions.
The highest miss rates are seen for caught and bowled, and for catches at short leg. Bowlers lack the luxury of setting themselves up for catches, while short leg has the least time of any position to react to a ball hit well. Many of the chances there are described as half-chances or technical. Slips catches are twice as likely to be dropped as wicketkeepers' catches, a measure of the advantage of gloves.
However, it would be unwise to read too much into the table above. Slip fielders or short-leg fielders are not inferior to those at mid-off; they get much more difficult chances. In the period of the study, Alastair Cook missed more chances than any other non-wicketkeeper, some 62 misses, but since many of his misses came at short leg, his miss rate doesn't look so bad.
While comparing lapse rates of different fielders is risky, it is worth mentioning Graeme Smith, whose drop rate of only 14% is the best among long-serving players by a considerable margin. Between August 2012 and February 2013, Smith took 25 catches and recorded no missed chances. Other slip fielders with outstanding catching records include Andrew Strauss and Ross Taylor on 20%, Michael Clarke on 21%, and Ricky Ponting on 22%. Elsewhere in the field, Warner at one stage took 20 consecutive chances that came to him.
Of those who have recorded more drops than catches, Umar Gul leads the list, with 11 catches and 14 misses. In 2014, Mushfiqur Rahim missed ten consecutive chances that came his way. Oddly enough, he caught his next 13 chances. Kevin Pietersen came to Test cricket with a fine catching reputation, but he dropped the first seven chances that came to him. He then caught his next 16 chances. The most missed chances in a match for one team, in this data set, is 12 by India against England in Mumbai in 2006. The most missed chances in an innings is nine by Pakistan against England in Faisalabad in 2005, and also by Bangladesh against Pakistan in Dhaka in 2011. In Karachi in 2009, Mahela Jayawardene (240) was dropped on 17 and 43, Thilan Samaraweera (231) was dropped on 73 and 77, and Younis Khan (313) was dropped on 92. The combined cost of all the missed chances in the match was 1152 runs, or 684 runs based on "first" drops off each of the batsmen.
There is some evidence of "contagious" butterfingers in teams. In the second Test of the 1985 series in Colombo, India dropped seven catches against Sri Lanka on the first day, on which the only wicket to fall was thanks to a run-out. India also dropped six catches in the space of ten overs in Rawalpindi in 2004, five of them coming in the first hour of the fourth day. It is rare enough for six chances to be offered at all in the space of ten overs at all, let alone to see all of them missed.
Behind the stumps
Here is some data on the miss rates, including stumpings, of various wicketkeepers of the 21st century. Not all are listed, but those with particularly low or high drop rates are given.
The wicketkeeper with the most misses is MS Dhoni with 66 (18%). In his defence, Dhoni had to deal with a high percentage of spin bowling, which presents a much greater challenge for keepers. Miss rates for leading wicketkeepers off spinners average around 30%, for both catches and stumpings, but it is only 10% for catches off pace bowlers. It can certainly be argued that keeping to spinners is the true test of a keeper.
It is not uncommon for keepers to start with a bang but fade later in their careers. Boucher, Watling, Gilchrist and de Villiers all had miss rates in single digits earlier in their careers. Gilchrist's miss rate rose in the last couple of years before his retirement. Others with very low rates, who did not qualify for the table, include Peter Nevill and Chris Read, on 7%. Read, to my eye, was one of the best modern wicketkeepers, but he did not get very many opportunities since he was unable to score enough runs to hold his place.
A short history of dropped catches
In addition to the data for the 21st century I have gathered data from other periods of Test history, using scorebooks that recorded dropped catches. The best sources are scorebooks by Bill Ferguson in the 1910s and 1920s, and by Bill Frindall from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. I have also used a limited number of other sources, including scores by Irving Rosenwater and some by Pakistan TV scorers. I have extracted data from about 200 Test scores in all, dating from before 1999.
Again, there must be caveats. We cannot be sure that the judging of dropped catches was on the same terms throughout, and we cannot be sure of the effect of TV replays on these assessments. I would say, however, that in the case of Frindall we have a meticulous observer with a very consistent style over multiple decades.
Once again, it would be unwise to read too much into each little blip in the data, but in general there is a trend toward lower rates of missed chances. The trend would probably be steeper if the data was limited to Australia and England, as the recent data includes countries such as Bangladesh that have had little or no coverage in earlier decades.
I might add an opinion from decades of observation: I believe that the greatest area of improvement has been with weaker fielders. Today everyone, including those with limited skills, has to do extensive fielding drills and take that part of the game very seriously. This has been one effect of the one-day game. In past decades many took fielding seriously. Jack Hobbs, Don Bradman and Neil Harvey worked hard at it, and I doubt if any player today works as hard on fielding as Colin Bland did in the 1960s (Bland would spend hours picking up and throwing a ball at a single stump: his record of run-outs is superior to that of anyone today). However, there were also players who did much less work on their fielding skills. In the modern game there is nowhere to hide, and everyone must put in the training effort. As a result, overall standards have risen.
For all its bewildering array of data, cricket statistics still has a few blind spots. One of the most obvious is in the area of missed chances, where there have been few extensive studies. Gerald Brodribb in Next Man In mentioned that statistician RH Campbell estimated that 30% of catches were missed in Tests in the 1920s. I have seen a figure of more than 30 dropped catches by West Indies in Australia in 1968-69, a team plagued by poor fielding. But really basic questions like "Overall, what percentage of chances are dropped?" lack answers.
For a number of years I have collected all the missed chances I could find in ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball texts for Test matches. Since the site does not always use standard terms to describe missed chances, and different ball-by-ball commentators have their own ways of expressing themselves, I searched the text for 40 or more words and phrases that might indicate a miss, from "drop" and "dolly" to "shell", "grass" and "hash". The process generally flagged about 100 to 200 lines in the commentary for each Test, which I then searched manually to identify real chances. For some Tests, I also confirmed data by checking match reports and other ball-by-ball sources.
While the commentary goes back to 1999, the textual detail can be patchy in the early years. I logged missed chances from late 2000 onwards, but consider that data to be substantially complete only from 2003. I have compiled a list of over 4000 missed chances in Tests from this century; about a third of all Tests (635) are represented.
Unavoidably, there are caveats. Sometimes opinions may vary as to whether a chance should be considered a miss. I take a hard line: "half", "technical" and "academic" chances are included, and I try to include any chances where the fielder failed to touch the ball but should have done so, if they can be identified. Edges passing between the wicketkeeper and first slip are considered chances even if no one has touched the ball. Since 2005, I have divided chances into two categories, "normal" and "difficult", according to how they are described. About half fall into each category.
There will always be uncertainty about some dropped catches, as there is always the possibility that some others have been overlooked. However, as long as the collection method is as consistent and exhaustive as possible, I would argue that a great majority of misses have been identified and that the data can be collated into useful statistics.
So back to the original question: how many chances are dropped? The answer is about one-quarter; typically seven missed chances per Test. Here is a table showing missed chances by country.
| Fielding team | 2003-2009 | 2010-2015 |
| New Zealand | 23.6% | 21.4% |
| South Africa | 20.9% | 21.6% |
| Australia | 23.2% | 21.8% |
| England | 25.5% | 24.8% |
| West Indies | 30.5% | 25.4% |
| Sri Lanka | 25.3% | 26.8% |
| India | 24.6% | 27.2% |
| Pakistan | 30.8% | 30.2% |
| Zimbabwe | 27.1% | 31.9% |
| Bangladesh | 33.3% | 33.1% |
The difference between the top three countries in the last five years is not significant; however, there are more substantial differences down the list. Generally, Bangladesh have had the weakest catching record since they started in Test cricket, although there are recent signs of improvement. Other countries have had fluctuating fortunes. West Indies had a miss rate of over 30% from 2003 to 2009, but have tightened up their game in the last couple of years. India have seen a rate of 33% in 2013 fall to 23% in 2015, and Sri Lanka have also improved their catching significantly in just the last two years.
In some years, countries like Australia, South Africa and New Zealand have seen their rates drop below 20%; the best single-year result was 16.9% by South Africa in 2013, when they were the No. 1-ranked team in Tests. In good years, the proportion of dropped catches rated as "difficult" generally increases; good teams still miss the hard ones but drop fewer easy ones. Typically, two-thirds of Australia's missed chances are rated as difficult, but the same applies to only one-third of Bangladesh's missed chances.
The lucky
As a batsman's innings progresses, the odds of him offering a chance increase. About 72% of batsmen reaching 50 do so without giving a chance, but the percentage for century-makers is 56% in the first 100 runs. Only 33% of double-centuries are chanceless in the first 200 runs. The highest absolutely chanceless innings is 374 by Mahela Jayawardene in Colombo; Lara's 400 in Antigua contained a couple of "academic" chances.
The most expensive missed chance since the start of 2000 is 297 runs for Inzamam-ul-Haq, who made 329 after being missed on 32 in Lahore in 2002. Historically there have been more expensive misses: Mark Taylor (334 not out) was dropped on 18 and 27 by Saeed Anwar, and there was a missed stumping on 40 for Len Hutton (364) in 1938. Perhaps even luckier was Kumar Sangakkara, who made 270 in Bulawayo after being dropped on 0. Sachin Tendulkar was dropped on 0 when he made his highest score, 248 not out in Dhaka. Mike Hussey gave a possible chance first ball at the Gabba in 2010, and went on to make 195. Graham Gooch was famously dropped by Kiran More when on 36 at Lord's in 1990. He went on to make 333.
The data turns up four batsmen who have been dropped five times in an innings: one was Andy Blignaut, whose 84 not out in Harare in 2005 included an extremely rare hat-trick of dropped catches; Zaheer Khan was the unhappy bowler. (There was also a hat-trick of missed chances at Old Trafford in 1972, when two batsmen survived against Geoff Arnold.) The others who have been missed five times are Hashim Amla (253 in Nagpur, 2010), Taufeeq Umar (135 in St Kitts, 2011) and Kane Williamson (242 not out in Wellington, 2014). Nothing in this century quite matches the seven or eight missed catches (reports vary) off George Bonnor when he made 87 in Sydney in 1883, or six misses off Bill Ponsford in his 266 at The Oval in 1934 (as recorded by veteran scorer Bill Ferguson). Wavell Hinds was dropped twice at the MCG in 2000, and still made a duck.
The batsman with most reprieves in the study period is Virender Sehwag, missed 68 times, just one ahead of Sangakkara. About 37% of the chances Sehwag offered were dropped, which is well above average and probably a testament to the power of his hitting.
The unlucky
Broadly, spin bowlers suffer more from dropped catches and (of course) missed stumpings. Chances at short leg, along with caught and bowled, have the highest miss rates among fielding positions, and these positions happen to feature more strongly among spinners' wickets than pace bowlers'. Overall, 27% of chances off spin bowlers are missed, as against 23% of chances off pace bowlers.
In the study period, the bowlers with the most missed chances in Tests are Harbhajan Singh (99) and Danish Kaneria (93). Harbhajan has had 26 chances missed at short leg alone. Bear in mind that these bowlers' careers are not fully covered; the data for about 10% of Harbhajan's career is not available to analyse. Pace bowlers with the most misses, as of January 2016, are Jimmy Anderson (89) and Stuart Broad (85).
Spare a thought for James Tredwell, who has played only two Tests but suffered ten missed chances, including seven on debut, the most for any bowler since the start of 2000. Most were very difficult, with three of them missed by the bowler himself. Also worth mentioning is Zulfiqar Babar, who has had 30 chances missed in his Test career and only 28 catches (and stumpings) taken.
At the other end of the scale, Adil Rashid has had eight catches taken off his bowling with no misses (as of August 2016). Neil Wagner of New Zealand has had only seven misses out of 63 chances, a rate of 11%.
Two bowlers have had catches missed off their first ball in Test cricket: David Warner (Dean Brownlie dropped by James Pattinson, Brisbane, 2011) and RP Singh (Shoaib Malik dropped by Anil Kumble, Faisalabad, 2006).
There is an intriguing case from 1990. Against West Indies in Lahore, Wasim Akram took four wickets in five balls: W, W, 1, W, W. In a surviving scorebook, the single, by Ian Bishop, is marked as a dropped catch at mid-on. If so, Akram came within a hair's breadth of five wickets in five balls, since the batsmen crossed, and Bishop did not face again. (Wisden, it should be noted, says that the catch was out of reach.)
The guilty
When it comes to catching, some positions are much more challenging than others. That will come as no surprise, but putting some numbers to this is an interesting exercise. The table below shows the miss rate for different field positions.
| Position | Chances | % Missed |
| Keeper (ct) | 2188 | 15% |
| Stumping | 254 | 36% |
| Slip | 2062 | 29% |
| Gully | 404 | 30% |
| Third man | 36 | 17% |
| Point | 371 | 29% |
| Cover | 319 | 23% |
| Mid-off | 253 | 20% |
| Bowler | 378 | 47% |
| Mid-on | 340 | 22% |
| Midwicket | 455 | 23% |
| Short leg | 518 | 38% |
| Square leg | 286 | 19% |
| Fine leg | 170 | 30% |
The highest miss rates are seen for caught and bowled, and for catches at short leg. Bowlers lack the luxury of setting themselves up for catches, while short leg has the least time of any position to react to a ball hit well. Many of the chances there are described as half-chances or technical. Slips catches are twice as likely to be dropped as wicketkeepers' catches, a measure of the advantage of gloves.
However, it would be unwise to read too much into the table above. Slip fielders or short-leg fielders are not inferior to those at mid-off; they get much more difficult chances. In the period of the study, Alastair Cook missed more chances than any other non-wicketkeeper, some 62 misses, but since many of his misses came at short leg, his miss rate doesn't look so bad.
While comparing lapse rates of different fielders is risky, it is worth mentioning Graeme Smith, whose drop rate of only 14% is the best among long-serving players by a considerable margin. Between August 2012 and February 2013, Smith took 25 catches and recorded no missed chances. Other slip fielders with outstanding catching records include Andrew Strauss and Ross Taylor on 20%, Michael Clarke on 21%, and Ricky Ponting on 22%. Elsewhere in the field, Warner at one stage took 20 consecutive chances that came to him.
Of those who have recorded more drops than catches, Umar Gul leads the list, with 11 catches and 14 misses. In 2014, Mushfiqur Rahim missed ten consecutive chances that came his way. Oddly enough, he caught his next 13 chances. Kevin Pietersen came to Test cricket with a fine catching reputation, but he dropped the first seven chances that came to him. He then caught his next 16 chances. The most missed chances in a match for one team, in this data set, is 12 by India against England in Mumbai in 2006. The most missed chances in an innings is nine by Pakistan against England in Faisalabad in 2005, and also by Bangladesh against Pakistan in Dhaka in 2011. In Karachi in 2009, Mahela Jayawardene (240) was dropped on 17 and 43, Thilan Samaraweera (231) was dropped on 73 and 77, and Younis Khan (313) was dropped on 92. The combined cost of all the missed chances in the match was 1152 runs, or 684 runs based on "first" drops off each of the batsmen.
There is some evidence of "contagious" butterfingers in teams. In the second Test of the 1985 series in Colombo, India dropped seven catches against Sri Lanka on the first day, on which the only wicket to fall was thanks to a run-out. India also dropped six catches in the space of ten overs in Rawalpindi in 2004, five of them coming in the first hour of the fourth day. It is rare enough for six chances to be offered at all in the space of ten overs at all, let alone to see all of them missed.
Behind the stumps
Here is some data on the miss rates, including stumpings, of various wicketkeepers of the 21st century. Not all are listed, but those with particularly low or high drop rates are given.
| Chances | %Miss | |
| Mark Boucher | 364 | 10% |
| BJ Watling | 119 | 11% |
| Tatenda Taibu | 57 | 11% |
| AB de Villiers | 94 | 11% |
| Adam Gilchrist | 357 | 12% |
| Kamran Akmal | 203 | 20% |
| Sarfraz Ahmed | 63 | 21% |
| Dinesh Karthik | 50 | 22% |
| Adnan Akmal | 77 | 22% |
| Mushfiqur Rahim | 86 | 32% |
The wicketkeeper with the most misses is MS Dhoni with 66 (18%). In his defence, Dhoni had to deal with a high percentage of spin bowling, which presents a much greater challenge for keepers. Miss rates for leading wicketkeepers off spinners average around 30%, for both catches and stumpings, but it is only 10% for catches off pace bowlers. It can certainly be argued that keeping to spinners is the true test of a keeper.
It is not uncommon for keepers to start with a bang but fade later in their careers. Boucher, Watling, Gilchrist and de Villiers all had miss rates in single digits earlier in their careers. Gilchrist's miss rate rose in the last couple of years before his retirement. Others with very low rates, who did not qualify for the table, include Peter Nevill and Chris Read, on 7%. Read, to my eye, was one of the best modern wicketkeepers, but he did not get very many opportunities since he was unable to score enough runs to hold his place.
A short history of dropped catches
In addition to the data for the 21st century I have gathered data from other periods of Test history, using scorebooks that recorded dropped catches. The best sources are scorebooks by Bill Ferguson in the 1910s and 1920s, and by Bill Frindall from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. I have also used a limited number of other sources, including scores by Irving Rosenwater and some by Pakistan TV scorers. I have extracted data from about 200 Test scores in all, dating from before 1999.
Again, there must be caveats. We cannot be sure that the judging of dropped catches was on the same terms throughout, and we cannot be sure of the effect of TV replays on these assessments. I would say, however, that in the case of Frindall we have a meticulous observer with a very consistent style over multiple decades.
Once again, it would be unwise to read too much into each little blip in the data, but in general there is a trend toward lower rates of missed chances. The trend would probably be steeper if the data was limited to Australia and England, as the recent data includes countries such as Bangladesh that have had little or no coverage in earlier decades.
I might add an opinion from decades of observation: I believe that the greatest area of improvement has been with weaker fielders. Today everyone, including those with limited skills, has to do extensive fielding drills and take that part of the game very seriously. This has been one effect of the one-day game. In past decades many took fielding seriously. Jack Hobbs, Don Bradman and Neil Harvey worked hard at it, and I doubt if any player today works as hard on fielding as Colin Bland did in the 1960s (Bland would spend hours picking up and throwing a ball at a single stump: his record of run-outs is superior to that of anyone today). However, there were also players who did much less work on their fielding skills. In the modern game there is nowhere to hide, and everyone must put in the training effort. As a result, overall standards have risen.
Friday, 23 October 2015
Expecting Sehwag to do the unexpected
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan in Cricinfo
Opposition captains always feared: what if Sehwag gets going? Everyone else just learned to accept that he would forever surprise
Going up: Sehwag constantly turned traditional batting concepts on their head © AFP
The heart wishes Virender Sehwag had retired after a rousing Test, his team-mates chairing him off the ground, the crowd bidding him adieu with a standing ovation. The mind understands that this was never going to come to pass, that Sehwag's days as an international cricketer were long past, and that he would tweet the news of his exit (as he had promised late last year) and be off without a fuss.
The end was as abrupt as it was apt. Not for him a press conference bathed in emotion, or a speech that tugged at heartstrings. There was no grand felicitation, there were no teary goodbyes. Instead he went his own way, wrapping up with a tweet that started "I hereby… " and a statement that began, "To paraphrase Mark Twain…"
None of this should come as a surprise; to have experienced Sehwag's career is to have come to expect the unexpected. During times when conventional wisdom advised circumspection, he would blast off. Where other batsmen shut shop a few overs before stumps, he saw it as an opportunity to pick off boundaries. When opposition captains pushed mid-off and mid-on back, he didn't look at it as a chance for singles; instead he was determined to launch the ball over the fielders' heads. Where team-mates used the services of a nightwatchman, he deemed it an insult ("If I can't play for 25 minutes, I'm not much of a batsman.")
Stories of Sehwag's counter-intuition are legion. He once charged a medium-pace bowler in a Ranji Trophy game, swished wildly, and missed by more than a foot. That in itself should come as no surprise, except, as his former team-mate Aakash Chopra wrote on this website, it was little but an act. On "one of the worst pitches", Sehwag was actually trying to mess with the bowler's length. Sure enough, the trick rattled the opponent. The next two balls pitched short. And Sehwag smashed two fours.
Paul Harris ended up the loser in his contest with Sehwag in 2008 © Getty Images
The common refrain while talking about Sehwag's batting is how his approach was so simple, how the see-ball-hit-ball approach served him so well. This, of course, is partly true - he has himself acknowledged the value of clearing all clutter from the mind - but it is also somewhat reductionist. Sehwag might not have analysed ground conditions and wagon wheels with a high level of granularity (and, back in 2006, he might not have known about Pankaj Roy and Vinoo Mankad's record partnership) but he was far from unschooled. He analysed his innings and dismissals, and spoke to those he respected about technical glitches, taking on advice from openers as varied in approach as Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth. He enjoyed chatting with psychologist Rudi Webster (he was especially curious to hear about the early struggles of Viv Richards, whom Webster likened Sehwag to) and sometimes surprised team-mates by reeling off names of bowlers he had faced in stray innings.
Most significantly he was astute enough to constantly upend traditional approaches to batting. Where Sachin Tendulkar was bogged down, padding away Ashley Giles bowling over the wicket, Sehwag backed away and slashed; charged diagonally and slashed; and, in what was little short of a tight slap across the bowler's face, reverse-swept without a care in the world. None of this was blind slogging; it was a planned assault to disrupt a bowler's rhythm, nullifying his negative tactics. Six years on, when another left-arm spinner targeted his pads, Sehwag challenged him: "Come round the wicket and first ball I'll hit you for a six." Paul Harris - with a long-off, long-on, deep midwicket and a deep point - accepted the dare. And sure enough, the first ball soared over the sightscreen.
Such provocation wasn't merely an instinctive flash of bravado. Like the smartest of bowlers, Sehwag understood when to needle the opposition and when to send out a message by shutting up. Against Australia in Chennai in 2004, he made friendly small-talk with some fielders as he walked off after the first day's play. But come the end of the fourth day, with India chasing a tricky target, he pounded a drive past Glenn McGrath and strode off, chin up, with a raging sense of purpose. "You have to show the other team that you're here to win," he would later say of that unforgettable walk-off.
Fury Road: Sehwag set up India's record chase against England in Chennai in 2008 © AFP
It has often been pointed out that Sehwag averaged slightly over 30 in the third and fourth innings of Tests with just one hundred, a stat used to demonstrate his frailty under "scoreboard pressure". What is not highlighted as much is that he averaged a mighty 65.91 in the second innings of Tests, with 12 hundreds - many of which came after the opposition had piled on massive scores. When New Zealand amassed 630 in Mohali in 2003, Sehwag responded with 130; when South Africa piled on 510 in Kanpur in 2004, he answered with 164; when Pakistan erected 679 in Lahore in 2006, he blitzed 254; and when South Africa put on 540 in Chennai in 2008, he smoked the fastest Test triple-hundred. As important as it is to celebrate Sehwag the match-winner, it's vital to hail Sehwag the match-saver: the opening batsman who drew games not by playing out time but by rollicking along at berserker pace, eliminating threats of India following on.
What this meant was that, despite his poor fourth-innings record, teams were often hesitant to declare in the third innings, the fear of "what if Sehwag gets going?" never far from their calculations. There is no stat to quantify the psychological effect that Sehwag had on fielding teams but an Ian Chappell quote from 2005 sums up the sentiment: "Sehwag can change the course of a match with the ease of Moses parting the Red Sea".
Over the years there were a number of innings when Sehwag parted the metaphorical Red Sea, but the apex of match-changeability arrived on that December afternoon in 2008 - a month after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai - when England set India 387 for victory in Chennai. The odds were grim. No team had chased more than 155 at the ground and no team had achieved a fourth-innings target of more than 276 at any Indian venue.
None of this mattered to Sehwag. He had begun the fourth day by telling Ravi Shastri, "We could easily chase 300-plus against England," and then gone on to burn the batting manual, juddering a 68-ball 83 to fire-start the chase. There were rasping upper cuts and swirling sixes; the short balls ending up in the V between point and third man, the full ones in the V between square leg and midwicket. It was a kind of innings that galvanises the team to dare to dream; an innings that sends shock waves through the fielding side; and an innings that makes ten-year-olds want to reach for their bats, getting them hooked to the game for good.
Once the win was achieved, Tendulkar was asked about Sehwag's mighty eruption. "We are quite used to that," he said with a smile. "You kind of expect something which is not expected."
He may as well have been summing up a once-in-a-lifetime career.
Opposition captains always feared: what if Sehwag gets going? Everyone else just learned to accept that he would forever surprise
Going up: Sehwag constantly turned traditional batting concepts on their head © AFPThe heart wishes Virender Sehwag had retired after a rousing Test, his team-mates chairing him off the ground, the crowd bidding him adieu with a standing ovation. The mind understands that this was never going to come to pass, that Sehwag's days as an international cricketer were long past, and that he would tweet the news of his exit (as he had promised late last year) and be off without a fuss.
The end was as abrupt as it was apt. Not for him a press conference bathed in emotion, or a speech that tugged at heartstrings. There was no grand felicitation, there were no teary goodbyes. Instead he went his own way, wrapping up with a tweet that started "I hereby… " and a statement that began, "To paraphrase Mark Twain…"
None of this should come as a surprise; to have experienced Sehwag's career is to have come to expect the unexpected. During times when conventional wisdom advised circumspection, he would blast off. Where other batsmen shut shop a few overs before stumps, he saw it as an opportunity to pick off boundaries. When opposition captains pushed mid-off and mid-on back, he didn't look at it as a chance for singles; instead he was determined to launch the ball over the fielders' heads. Where team-mates used the services of a nightwatchman, he deemed it an insult ("If I can't play for 25 minutes, I'm not much of a batsman.")
Stories of Sehwag's counter-intuition are legion. He once charged a medium-pace bowler in a Ranji Trophy game, swished wildly, and missed by more than a foot. That in itself should come as no surprise, except, as his former team-mate Aakash Chopra wrote on this website, it was little but an act. On "one of the worst pitches", Sehwag was actually trying to mess with the bowler's length. Sure enough, the trick rattled the opponent. The next two balls pitched short. And Sehwag smashed two fours.
Paul Harris ended up the loser in his contest with Sehwag in 2008 © Getty ImagesThe common refrain while talking about Sehwag's batting is how his approach was so simple, how the see-ball-hit-ball approach served him so well. This, of course, is partly true - he has himself acknowledged the value of clearing all clutter from the mind - but it is also somewhat reductionist. Sehwag might not have analysed ground conditions and wagon wheels with a high level of granularity (and, back in 2006, he might not have known about Pankaj Roy and Vinoo Mankad's record partnership) but he was far from unschooled. He analysed his innings and dismissals, and spoke to those he respected about technical glitches, taking on advice from openers as varied in approach as Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth. He enjoyed chatting with psychologist Rudi Webster (he was especially curious to hear about the early struggles of Viv Richards, whom Webster likened Sehwag to) and sometimes surprised team-mates by reeling off names of bowlers he had faced in stray innings.
Most significantly he was astute enough to constantly upend traditional approaches to batting. Where Sachin Tendulkar was bogged down, padding away Ashley Giles bowling over the wicket, Sehwag backed away and slashed; charged diagonally and slashed; and, in what was little short of a tight slap across the bowler's face, reverse-swept without a care in the world. None of this was blind slogging; it was a planned assault to disrupt a bowler's rhythm, nullifying his negative tactics. Six years on, when another left-arm spinner targeted his pads, Sehwag challenged him: "Come round the wicket and first ball I'll hit you for a six." Paul Harris - with a long-off, long-on, deep midwicket and a deep point - accepted the dare. And sure enough, the first ball soared over the sightscreen.
Such provocation wasn't merely an instinctive flash of bravado. Like the smartest of bowlers, Sehwag understood when to needle the opposition and when to send out a message by shutting up. Against Australia in Chennai in 2004, he made friendly small-talk with some fielders as he walked off after the first day's play. But come the end of the fourth day, with India chasing a tricky target, he pounded a drive past Glenn McGrath and strode off, chin up, with a raging sense of purpose. "You have to show the other team that you're here to win," he would later say of that unforgettable walk-off.
Fury Road: Sehwag set up India's record chase against England in Chennai in 2008 © AFPIt has often been pointed out that Sehwag averaged slightly over 30 in the third and fourth innings of Tests with just one hundred, a stat used to demonstrate his frailty under "scoreboard pressure". What is not highlighted as much is that he averaged a mighty 65.91 in the second innings of Tests, with 12 hundreds - many of which came after the opposition had piled on massive scores. When New Zealand amassed 630 in Mohali in 2003, Sehwag responded with 130; when South Africa piled on 510 in Kanpur in 2004, he answered with 164; when Pakistan erected 679 in Lahore in 2006, he blitzed 254; and when South Africa put on 540 in Chennai in 2008, he smoked the fastest Test triple-hundred. As important as it is to celebrate Sehwag the match-winner, it's vital to hail Sehwag the match-saver: the opening batsman who drew games not by playing out time but by rollicking along at berserker pace, eliminating threats of India following on.
What this meant was that, despite his poor fourth-innings record, teams were often hesitant to declare in the third innings, the fear of "what if Sehwag gets going?" never far from their calculations. There is no stat to quantify the psychological effect that Sehwag had on fielding teams but an Ian Chappell quote from 2005 sums up the sentiment: "Sehwag can change the course of a match with the ease of Moses parting the Red Sea".
Over the years there were a number of innings when Sehwag parted the metaphorical Red Sea, but the apex of match-changeability arrived on that December afternoon in 2008 - a month after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai - when England set India 387 for victory in Chennai. The odds were grim. No team had chased more than 155 at the ground and no team had achieved a fourth-innings target of more than 276 at any Indian venue.
None of this mattered to Sehwag. He had begun the fourth day by telling Ravi Shastri, "We could easily chase 300-plus against England," and then gone on to burn the batting manual, juddering a 68-ball 83 to fire-start the chase. There were rasping upper cuts and swirling sixes; the short balls ending up in the V between point and third man, the full ones in the V between square leg and midwicket. It was a kind of innings that galvanises the team to dare to dream; an innings that sends shock waves through the fielding side; and an innings that makes ten-year-olds want to reach for their bats, getting them hooked to the game for good.
Once the win was achieved, Tendulkar was asked about Sehwag's mighty eruption. "We are quite used to that," he said with a smile. "You kind of expect something which is not expected."
He may as well have been summing up a once-in-a-lifetime career.
Tuesday, 20 October 2015
The wild animal of batting
Jarrod Kimber in Cricinfo
There are batsmen you can explain, whose magic you can unravel. Virender Sehwag was not one of them
Sehwag: an experience that grabs you © Getty Images
There is a flash. It's up and over a bunch of slips, maybe a gully, and a third man. The ball just disappears up, out of sight, before dropping over the rope. The third man is puffing hard, but this wasn't for him. There is a frustrated, faceless bowler, an unspecified ground and a generic captain rubbing his forehead.
As it happens you can hear whispers of the batsman being compared to Sachin. But that is unfair. This is something different.
There are some things that shouldn't be explained. Maybe that's why we don't get Victor Trumper. We search for answers, facts, numbers and reasons. For some people that doen't work; you have to see them, feel them. They are part of a time and place you don't get. You are not meant to understand what they stood for, just know that it was something special through all the witnesses.
Yet, even when you weren't there, you had no context, no visuals, no memories, no experience; he could still move you. Sometimes it was the actual numbers alone. Just starting at a scorecard, there was an experience of him that just grabs you. The man who wore no number, could with a simple 200 out of 330, give you a sudden rush of blood, that slight, magical dizzy feel of something you can't quite explain.
There are some who say he only makes runs on Asian flat tracks. It feels like abusing a painter for preferring to use canvas instead of wanting to paint a live shark. What he created with the flat tracks was unlike what anyone else would, or could. There were times when he scored that it felt like Asia had been created just so he would have this stage.
There is a flash over the leg side. It's a drop-kick, a pick-up, a smack. The bowler is just an extra, a vessel. The ball goes over a rope, a fence, some spectators, a hill. It hits a scoreboard. Maybe it goes over it. Maybe it disappears into the distance. Maybe it explodes the scoreboard like you see in them Hollywood baseball films. The whole thing happened like it was preordained, like it was supposed to happen that way, and that time, for some secret reason.
He just stands there. Looking generally disinterested. People around the world are yelling, jumping, screaming, laughing. Mouths are wide open, jaws are on the floor. But he doesn't react that way. He almost never does.
There is a flash outside off. The bat has missed the ball. Yet the same general look of disinterest and calmness he has after a boundary follows a play and miss. Other days he uses the same smile after his best shot, or his worst.
Playing and missing is supposed to be a test of who you are as a human being. Do you believe in luck, do you believe in hard work, do you believe in faith? In his case, none of these applied. As to whether the ball went into a scoreboard, into a crowd, onto a roof, or safely nestled in the keeper's gloves, it was gone. Finished. That moment, that euphoria, that danger, doesn't matter anymore. The greatest legcutter, the sexiest doosra, or a mystery ball fired from a cannon, it doesn't matter. It could be a long hop. A full toss. It just goes past him. When you bowled to him, you weren't bowling to a batsman; you were bowling to a belief system.
There was comfort in his madness. Others have stopped, slowed, changed, restricted, just to survive, to thrive, to score all that they could score. Not him. Maybe he just couldn't slow down, couldn't hold back. He was what he was, a wild animal of batting.
There is a flash through point. It seems to exist on his bat and at the boundary at the same time. It was a cut but could have been a drive. They all went the same way, just as fast. Before the commentator has had time to react, the bowler has placed his hands on his head or the crowd is fully out of their chairs, the ball's journey has been completed.
Maybe it's Chennai. Maybe it's Melbourne. Maybe it's Lahore. Maybe it's Galle. Maybe It's Steyn. Maybe it's Ahktar. Maybe it's McGrath. Maybe it's Murali. It's all too quick. He's already moved on.
There are people who say he is just a slogger. That's a misunderstanding of slogging. Sloggers throw the bat recklessly without a method or a base. They always run out of luck, out of time, are found out. This was Zen slogging. He has a slogger's energy, a batsman's eye, and a tranquil mind. It's an odd combination. It shouldn't work. It didn't always.
But when it did, the innings was something that changed things. He could, when applied correctly, change the future. At other times, it was as if he could predict it. And if he didn't change the future of batting, he, at the very least, foretold it.
There are batsmen you can explain. You can unravel their magic; paint it for others to see. But he was above explanation. You couldn't unravel what he did, you simply had to reclassify it. His batting wasn't from the manual. It wasn't like the others.
If anything, it was a self-help manual, a religious text, wrapped up in cover drives. A road map for better living was right there in the middle of the ground. Play your shots, forget your mistakes, forget your success, keep playing your shots. Believe. Sehwagology.
There is a flash back past the bowler. There is someone, somewhere, stating that it is impossible to play that shot, from that ball. Someone else, somewhere else, is comparing him to another batsman. There is another someone, somewhere online, typing out their theory on his flaws. But at the ground their words get drowned out in applause - not applause, a cacophony of screaming.
There is a flash. A sudden burst of bright light. A brief display of joy. A moment. An instant. Virender Sehwag.
There are batsmen you can explain, whose magic you can unravel. Virender Sehwag was not one of them
Sehwag: an experience that grabs you © Getty ImagesThere is a flash. It's up and over a bunch of slips, maybe a gully, and a third man. The ball just disappears up, out of sight, before dropping over the rope. The third man is puffing hard, but this wasn't for him. There is a frustrated, faceless bowler, an unspecified ground and a generic captain rubbing his forehead.
As it happens you can hear whispers of the batsman being compared to Sachin. But that is unfair. This is something different.
There are some things that shouldn't be explained. Maybe that's why we don't get Victor Trumper. We search for answers, facts, numbers and reasons. For some people that doen't work; you have to see them, feel them. They are part of a time and place you don't get. You are not meant to understand what they stood for, just know that it was something special through all the witnesses.
Yet, even when you weren't there, you had no context, no visuals, no memories, no experience; he could still move you. Sometimes it was the actual numbers alone. Just starting at a scorecard, there was an experience of him that just grabs you. The man who wore no number, could with a simple 200 out of 330, give you a sudden rush of blood, that slight, magical dizzy feel of something you can't quite explain.
There are some who say he only makes runs on Asian flat tracks. It feels like abusing a painter for preferring to use canvas instead of wanting to paint a live shark. What he created with the flat tracks was unlike what anyone else would, or could. There were times when he scored that it felt like Asia had been created just so he would have this stage.
There is a flash over the leg side. It's a drop-kick, a pick-up, a smack. The bowler is just an extra, a vessel. The ball goes over a rope, a fence, some spectators, a hill. It hits a scoreboard. Maybe it goes over it. Maybe it disappears into the distance. Maybe it explodes the scoreboard like you see in them Hollywood baseball films. The whole thing happened like it was preordained, like it was supposed to happen that way, and that time, for some secret reason.
He just stands there. Looking generally disinterested. People around the world are yelling, jumping, screaming, laughing. Mouths are wide open, jaws are on the floor. But he doesn't react that way. He almost never does.
There is a flash outside off. The bat has missed the ball. Yet the same general look of disinterest and calmness he has after a boundary follows a play and miss. Other days he uses the same smile after his best shot, or his worst.
Playing and missing is supposed to be a test of who you are as a human being. Do you believe in luck, do you believe in hard work, do you believe in faith? In his case, none of these applied. As to whether the ball went into a scoreboard, into a crowd, onto a roof, or safely nestled in the keeper's gloves, it was gone. Finished. That moment, that euphoria, that danger, doesn't matter anymore. The greatest legcutter, the sexiest doosra, or a mystery ball fired from a cannon, it doesn't matter. It could be a long hop. A full toss. It just goes past him. When you bowled to him, you weren't bowling to a batsman; you were bowling to a belief system.
There was comfort in his madness. Others have stopped, slowed, changed, restricted, just to survive, to thrive, to score all that they could score. Not him. Maybe he just couldn't slow down, couldn't hold back. He was what he was, a wild animal of batting.
There is a flash through point. It seems to exist on his bat and at the boundary at the same time. It was a cut but could have been a drive. They all went the same way, just as fast. Before the commentator has had time to react, the bowler has placed his hands on his head or the crowd is fully out of their chairs, the ball's journey has been completed.
Maybe it's Chennai. Maybe it's Melbourne. Maybe it's Lahore. Maybe it's Galle. Maybe It's Steyn. Maybe it's Ahktar. Maybe it's McGrath. Maybe it's Murali. It's all too quick. He's already moved on.
There are people who say he is just a slogger. That's a misunderstanding of slogging. Sloggers throw the bat recklessly without a method or a base. They always run out of luck, out of time, are found out. This was Zen slogging. He has a slogger's energy, a batsman's eye, and a tranquil mind. It's an odd combination. It shouldn't work. It didn't always.
But when it did, the innings was something that changed things. He could, when applied correctly, change the future. At other times, it was as if he could predict it. And if he didn't change the future of batting, he, at the very least, foretold it.
There are batsmen you can explain. You can unravel their magic; paint it for others to see. But he was above explanation. You couldn't unravel what he did, you simply had to reclassify it. His batting wasn't from the manual. It wasn't like the others.
If anything, it was a self-help manual, a religious text, wrapped up in cover drives. A road map for better living was right there in the middle of the ground. Play your shots, forget your mistakes, forget your success, keep playing your shots. Believe. Sehwagology.
There is a flash back past the bowler. There is someone, somewhere, stating that it is impossible to play that shot, from that ball. Someone else, somewhere else, is comparing him to another batsman. There is another someone, somewhere online, typing out their theory on his flaws. But at the ground their words get drowned out in applause - not applause, a cacophony of screaming.
There is a flash. A sudden burst of bright light. A brief display of joy. A moment. An instant. Virender Sehwag.
Tuesday, 26 May 2015
Missing Virender Sehwag?
I think I am missing Virender Sehwag. To be fair, this is a wonderful bunch of young players and they are carrying the baton delivered to them by an extraordinary group. I find Ajinkya Rahane most pleasing to the eye, Rohit Sharma’s 264 was an audacious innings that stretched our imagination, the fielding is better than it has been and there are fast bowlers out there who don’t aspire to be medium-pacers. And I will tell people when I am old that I saw Virat Kohli bat. Cricket is still great fun but I am missing Sehwag.
Sehwag had me sitting on the edge of my seat. Always. It was like watching a thriller except that when you watched it the next time, you still didn’t know what was coming next. He was jaw-dropping, he was hair-wrenching. You rolled your eyes and you threw your head back. You looked at the scoreboard and it always showed you a different number. He could be exhilarating, he could be frustrating. He took you on a joyride and he laughed while you held on to your seat in fright.
I always thought Sehwag played cricket the way it was originally meant to be played. The numbers happened. 8586 runs in Test cricket @ 49.34 with 23 centuries. Those were brilliant numbers but we don’t need them to explain Sehwag. Or to fight his case in an argument. In cricket’s most native form, the bowler bowls to get a batsman out and the batsman plays to hit the ball. You got the feeling Sehwag didn’t worry beyond that. Only if he couldn’t hit the ball, he blocked it. You hardly ever analysed Sehwag’s innings, you just enjoyed them.
But he wasn’t a blind basher. Talking to him about cricket, and sadly those moments were too rare, you always came away thinking you had spoken to someone with an uncluttered, confident mind. “The batsman is always scared,” he once said, “but the bowler must be too. He must also think, if I bowl a bad ball where will Sehwag hit me!” The thinking behind that is clear and it has the simplicity that is disarming. If the bowler knows the batsman isn’t going to hit him, he isn’t afraid of bowling a bad ball. But he is most likely to bowl a bad ball when he is afraid of the consequences of bowling one.
We often talk, in sport, of playing to the fear in the enemy camp. Often we never get that far because of the fear in our own mind. A tense cricket match is as much about managing skill as it is about managing fear. There is scarcely a calm mind on a big day. Maybe that is why Sehwag was the most feared man in an India-Pakistan match. He played with a smile, with a song on his lips but also with a calm mind, letting fear brew within the opposition. In 9 Test matches, he made 1276 runs @91.14. It would have been interesting to have measured his pulse, especially in relation to everyone else’s!
He told us, too, that it was okay to hit in the air, to hit over the top and in doing so, he recalibrated risk for all of us. We were always told, from club cricketers to Test players, that hitting in the air was inviting another mode of dismissal. For years we accepted that as the gospel, like good boys we didn’t challenge it.
But Sehwag happily hit over the top, he played into the gap over the fielder’s head where everyone confined themselves to seeking the gap between fielders. Yes, it was still risky but with new bats, it was nowhere near as threatening as everyone believed it was.
And so he has left behind a treasure of good cheer. Which among those was his best? 201* out of only 329 against Sri Lanka when everyone else was playing on a minefield and he was on the highway? 319 against South Africa from only 304 balls while chasing 540? 309 at Multan? 254 at Lahore? That ridiculous 293 from 254 balls in Mumbai when he ended day 2 at 284 not out while still in the field at the start of play? Or was it that 83 from 68 balls with India chasing 387 to win a Test? Would anyone in the world hit eleven 4s and four 6s against a target that had only so rarely been achieved in cricket history? Sehwag often talks about facing the ball, not the bowler or the situation. Surely it had to be that way that day!
I don’t know how much I am going to see of him. I absolutely enjoyed seeing him play for the Kings XI in the IPL but what of India? Maybe the eyes aren’t seeing the ball the same way, maybe the feet are heavier, maybe the bat isn’t as charged with freedom. Maybe there isn’t the same fear in the mind of the bowler running in.
The runs are drying. You wonder if you are listening to the last bars of a lilting melody. You wonder if it is time to leave the theatre. I don’t know but if it is, it’s been an unforgettable ride.
Monday, 15 December 2014
All Sehwag's children
David Warner's first-innings hundred in Adelaide was fraught with meaning. One of those meanings has, quite rightly, been less reflected upon than those surrounding the passing of Phillip Hughes, but it nonetheless carries great force.
Warner is at the top of his game now. He has made 11 Test centuries, six of them in the past 12 months (and there will be more to come). He walked out in Adelaide afloat on adrenaline and emotion and began pumping the ball through the field and to the boundary, scoring 30-odd before his opening partner, Chris Rogers, had got to 5.
Cut back five years. Warner has just debuted as a T20 international for Australia without having made a single appearance in first-class cricket. The idea that he may one day play Test match cricket provokes not just laughter but horror. A few days later, Warner runs into India's opening batsman Virender Sehwag.
"He said to me, 'You'll be a better Test cricketer than you are a T20 player,'" Warner recalled. "I looked at him and basically said, 'Mate I've not even played a first-class game yet.' But he said, 'All the fielders are around the bat. If the ball's there in your zone, you're still going to hit it. You're going to have ample opportunities to score runs. You've always got to respect the good ball, but you've got to punish the ball you always punish.'"
Sehwag had looked at Warner and Test cricket through the prism of his own experience, and he knew.
Sehwag was right.
A few days before this Australia-India series was due to start, Sehwag was omitted from India's provisional 30-man squad for the World Cup. He last played Test cricket in March 2013, and last appeared in an ODI in January 2013. He says he wants to go on for another two or three years, batting in Delhi's middle order, but to all intents and purposes, it is perhaps over for him at the top.
He shares the era of Tendulkar, Ponting, Kallis, Dravid and the rest, but he is not one of them. There has always been something about his batting that suggests his otherness.
The great names of his era had deep connections to the game's past in their methods and their styles and their sensibility. Sehwag was always about the future.
He has not operated alone. Chris Gayle, for example, has been the alpha and omega of T20 batsmanship (at least at the top of the order). Sanath Jayasuriya sliced and carved a new way through ODIs. Barry Richards once scored 325 in a day against Dennis Lillee's Western Australia.
And yet perhaps only Brian Lara built huge scores as quickly and as often as Sehwag. But even Lara would often say that the first hour of his innings "belongs to the bowler". Sehwag was not willing to cede them the first delivery.
It was he who came up with the credo by which batsmen will come to live: "see ball, hit ball". A rich and complex game, all of its challenges of psychology and perception and neurology reduced to its barest essential. What joy it has brought. No one piled up runs quite like Sehwag piled them up. And he did it not just for a few overs, but for hours, and then sessions and sometimes days.
There are so many innings to choose from, but here's a thought about one that was almost entirely overshadowed. India's win over England in Chennaiafter the Mumbai terror attacks is rightly remembered as Tendulkar's Test, won with a knock only he could have played.
But it was set up by an innings only Sehwag could have played - 83 from 68 balls, and what was important about it was not his statistics but his intent. Faced with a score never before made to win in India, he simply tore into England's bowlers, smashing them so far and so fast that he shifted the entire psychology of the match from an inevitable England win into a joyous carnival of possibilities.
I have a pet theory that cricket must accelerate to match the culture in which it exists. It must become heightened; more compacted, more intense, more powerful. There's no doubt that it is already happening, and that it will continue to happen. Warner is just the first to walk the path from shortest format to longest.
Sehwag somehow saw that, or felt it, or just knew it deep within his bones. He has been great, and beyond that, he has shaped the future. They are all Sehwag's children now.
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
The pragmatic art of Virender Sehwag
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
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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
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
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