When Tendulkar, the greatest batsman in contemporary cricket, was creating a furore of sorts in the world of one-day cricket and test cricket with this mastery of batsmanship, little did the world know that a day would come when the master would step down the order to give way for a stroke-maker, say the destroyer. He is called Touchwood. The whole nation is whispering his name as he bats like a thunderbolt. With an uncomplicated cricket philosophy, his approach to the game is somewhat similar to Jayasuriya’s. He keeps things simple. Go out in the middle, play the ball not the bowler and have a blast. Yes, he is the new Sirius of Indian cricket, the man of the moment, a fan’s greatest joy and a bowler’s worst nightmare. He is Virender “Touchwood” Sehwag, who is rocking the cricket world, with his ability to tear even the best bowling attacks to pieces. Isn’t it an honour to talk about a legend in the making? It certainly is.
The 1999 triangular series between India-Pakistan and Srilanka saw the Indians trying out youngsters. There was Reetinder Sodhi, Laxmi Ratan Shukla and Virendar Sehwag. The final league match in Mohali saw Indians take on Pakistan and well, what better stage can a youngster ask for? It is such a coincidence that the little master too made his debut against the Pakistanis and so did Viru. Again there was an unfortunate co-incidence. Just like Tendulkar failed in his first one-day innings, Sehwag too failed to perform. But unlike Tendulkar, Sehwag wasn’t given a long run. One match, one failure and gosh!! He was dropped. The lad like a hungry lion waited until his chance came. And it did come in the series against the mighty Australians. Picked for the one-day series, Sehwag made a blazing start with a chanceless 58 and a 3 wicket haul. But once again luck didn’t favour him. With a broken finger, Sehwag had to wait a while till he struck gold.
Talk about striking the iron when it is hot, Sehwag got his break at the right time. The 2001 series in SriLanka had Tendulkar missing it with a heel injury. This is when Sehwag was promoted as an opener by the far sighted, John Wright. And boy, didn’t he strike hard. That series saw Sehwag emerge as a potent force. Dopes anybody remember his innings against NewZealand? More than the innings, I remember the beloved commentator, Tony Greig shouting, “Boy ‘o’ boy, this lad has heralded his arrival with a bang. Bowl spin, bowl fast, bowl anything, he’ll simply murder you.” Getting a comment like this from a person of Tony’s stature is no mean thing and that was when Sehwag came into limelight. From then on there has been no looking back.
Be it the tour of South Africa, West Indies, England or the recent ICC Champions Trophy, Sehwag has blasted his way through. Scoring over a 1000 runs in just 40 innings shows that he is a man of tremendous capabilities. Though averaging just 35 in one-dayers, Sehwag maintains a great strike-rate. In fact, his strike rate of 101.95 is the best one-day strike rate as of now. With 2 hundreds and 7 fifties, Sehwag has established himself as a perfect one-day opener. Who can forget his 126 against England in ICC Champions Trophy. What a knock!! He almost made Caddick and Cork cry. He simply tore the England attack apart and went on to make 126(his highest score).
But Sehwag has come good in the more traditional and longer form of the game as well. Now, he averages just over 50 and torments the bowlers with his aggressive attitude. I see him play both versions of the game with a single policy and that is, “Have bat, will hit.” So the bowlers would not have any respite whatsoever in both forms of the game. Such has been the influence of Sehwag.
If you ask me to describe Sehwag’s batting then I would say, perfect stance, straight elbow position, head-over-ball follow through, impeccable sense of timing, tremendously powerful stroke making ability, aggressive instinct and ability to keep the scoreboard ticking personifies his style of batting.
The biggest asset of Sehwag is that he plays at each and ever ball and shows the full face of the bat. This can be credited to his remarkable sense of timing. So I feel Sehwag is a great batsman in the making.
Well, when one is still wondering about, Dolly, the clone, we have the Sachin Tendulkar clone in Viru. He resembles Sachin in many a respect like his stance and follow through. But now a situation has come out where Sehwag’s exploits are overshadowing Sachin’s heroics. Any opponent team has a great difficulty to work out a strategy. Firstly they have to contain Sehwag and even if they are successful, they still have Sachin to come in next. On the whole, Sehwag rocks.
Sehwag is not just a batsman but a potential all-rounder. Though not a big spinner of the ball, Sehwag can bowl some useful overs in both forms of the game and with his fastish off-cutters, he can frustrate the batsmen and fetch some vital wickets. Being a person with a wonderful hand-eye co-ordination, he proves to be a good close-in fielder. This proves that this lad is versatile.
Conclusively, Virender Sehwag is an exciting player. To me he is a clone of Sachin Tendulkar, but he offers a little more of a chance. But in the meantime he can be destructive. He is an exciting prospect and along with Yuvraj and Kaif is making a significant difference to the Indian Team.
The key to his success is that he is prepared to be aggressive. He is willing to take on the opposition. Obviously, there are times when it won’t work but whenever it does, he is hard to stop. But as he is seen more by international teams and coaches, it will be the test of his ability to play at this level. He is a player who is flamboyant, but that could lead to his demise. I feel teams will exploit this flamboyance which is working to his advantage at this moment. Whether he can cope with it and emerge a winner, only time will tell. I wish he would because he should.