David Warner, and Virender Sehwag's vision of the future

Imagine for a moment that you are opening the batting in a one-day international. You step out onto the field, assailed suddenly by the reality of what you are about to do: the heat, the light, the noise, the scale of the field and of the crowd. Your partner takes strike, and gets a single away immediately. Not much chance for you to have a look. What's this wicket like, then, low? Slow? How long is it since you've faced this guy with a white ball - two years? Three? But hang on - the umpire's signalling a no-ball. Your first delivery will be a free hit. All of a sudden, you loosen up, feel a little better. You set yourself deep in the crease, get outside leg stump and free your arms and the ball sails up and over third man. Four. Easy. Thanks. Out with the bad thoughts. In with the good...

Now consider the difference between yourself and Virender Sehwag, to whom this happened the other day in the first ODI against West Indies. Viru stepped back and carved it over third man too - the difference being that he would have done it anyway, regardless of the no-ball and the free hit, and regardless of the fact it was an ODI and not a Test match or any other type of fixture. Because that is Sehwag, the man who gave the world the irreducible 'see ball, hit ball'.

This blog has long seen Sehwag as an avatar, a vision of the future, an outlier. But perhaps he is something else too; mentor, leader, philosopher king. In the modern age, there have always been attacking opening batsman. Gordon Greenidge, no slouch himself, recalled his partnership with Barry Richards at Hampshire: 'it was not unusual for applause to be ringing round the ground for his fifty while I still had single figures'. Richards once made 325 in a day at Perth against Dennis Lillee amongst others. Then came Jayasuriya, Slater, Hayden, Gayle, McCullum.

Yet none are Sehwag. Jayasuriya, Hayden and Gayle have Test match triple hundreds but Sehwag has two, and came within seven runs of a third. They are power players, yet Sehwag strikes at 20 runs per hundred balls better than any of them. Only Hayden can really claim to be in his class - the others all average about 10 less - and yet Hayden cannot be called a genius; the adjective effortless does not attach itself easily to his game.

Viru doesn't have Gayle's shoulders or Jayasuriya's forearms or Haydos' pecs. He has none of the nervous intensity of Slater or the cross-eyed desire of Hayden. He doesn't really have the insouciance of Gayle or Barry Richards. He is instead an almost implacable little Buddha, soft-edged, calmly accepting of the fates, whether they swing for him or against.

If there is one player he is most like, it is Lara, in that he can hit unstoppably not just for hours but for days. It is they who have built monolithic scores most regularly. Yet Lara didn't open, and he often gave the first hour or so of his innings to the bowler. That has not been Sehwag's way.

His technique is not revolutionary, just thrillingly heightened. What is different about Sehwag is his mind, the way he sees the game. Essentially, he is free. Where tradition insists that the new ball and fresh bowlers and aggressive fields are threats, he sees wide open spaces, a hard ball that will fly off the bat.

Sehwag said as much to David Warner a couple of years ago, when the notion of Warner wearing the Baggy Green was inducing not only ridicule but indignance. 'He said to me, 'you'll be a better Test cricketer than you are a twenty20 player',' Warner recalled a few days ago. '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'.'

This week, David Warner made his Test debut. Sehwag was more right than most of Australia. Warner does not have Sehwag's talent, but he shares his worldview. There will be many more who do in the years to come, and then it will become the new orthodoxy. That is Sehwag's true legacy. He has shared an era with Lara, Tendulkar, Dravid, Ponting, Kallis, yet he is not one of them. As great as they are and have been, they are the old order, more connected to the past than to the future.

And there is something more important here than just a mindshift, than changes in tactics or techniques. The game must always move forwards and renew itself. Essentially it must accelerate to match the speed of the culture in which it exists. Test cricket of the 1950s is as distant now as the rest of that decade, with its housewives and its radio plays and its music hall conservatism. David Warner may or may not succeed as a Test match opener - do you want to bet against Viru? - but plenty like him will. At some point or other they will be the norm, and they will be standing on Sehwag's shoulders, the shoulders of a giant. If he is not the best batsman of his time (and he might be), he is the most significant; a genius and a visionary with it.

Viru: transcendent

Anyone doubting that the new age of batting is here, doubt it no more. Sehwag and his acolyte Dilshan are not just batting differently, they are thinking differently. The mindset of the game has shifted now.

I blogged before on the physical resemblance between Sehwag and the UFC lightweight champion, BJ Penn. Penn fought at the weekend, administering a zen beating to Diego Sanchez. He seemed to float while he did it, barely striking Sanchez [although Diego's face begged to differ]. Penn's nickname is 'the Prodigy'. He comes from a rich family, doesn't fight for money and until recently, barely used to train between bouts. He is an entirely natural fighter - within three years of taking up Jui-Jitsu, he was not only a black belt, but the first non-Brazilian world champion. It makes you wonder how much deeper physical similarities can go.

Sehwag's mind is as great a strength as any he has. He lets it set him free. When he was receiving the man of the match award today, he said, 'I was actually supporting Sri Lanka. When I support India, they lose. So I was supporting Sri Lanka.' Great minds think differently...

NB: As usual Geoffrey Boycott had an interesting take on Viru in his Cricinfo column: 'I am not sure it [Sehwag's batting] is modern; it is more old-fashioned. Wally Hammond made 336 at more than a run a minute for England against New Zealand in Auckland in the 1932-33 series. It took him just 318 minutes to get 336. That is very much how Sehwag plays... He is a rare, special player because he plays with a flowing bat and an uninhibited style. He has an uncluttered mind, which I like. I don't think he gets cluttered up with technique and footwork he just plays in a wonderful instinctive way, which is good. I think on good batting pitches he is a modern-day great.... if it moves around I don't see him getting 300 so easily, but on certain pitches he is a fantastic player'.

Sehwag: The Dream

Further to the post below, another measure of greatness could be the degree to which it penetrates the subconscious. Last night I dreamed about Virender Sehwag. We were at the top of a very high green hill, which opened out onto a spectacular valley, me, Virender and another nameless cricketer. Viru was dressed in his whites and still had his blue headband on. 

For some reason, we had to get to the bottom of the hill. It was wet and had deep, muddy furrows in it, but Sehwag said, 'come on' and simply ran through the furrows like a mountain goat. At the bottom, with the skyscrapers of a distant city before us, I found some cards of the kind kids are meant to collect. Imbedded in each was a bit of footage of Sehwag playing a shot. The one I looked at was filmed from behind a net, and Viru came down the wicket and smashed the ball hard at the camera. 

The dream ended there, argument settled...

NB: Thanks to Jrod in the comments on the post below for pointing out that the Don got six runs closer than Sehwag to the three triple centuries. But then they couldn't field in those days. Have amended the post. 

Se7en: in praise of Viru

What is greatness in batting? It's a question worth asking. Virender Sehwag was seven runs away from doing something no-one has done. No-one, from Grace to Bradman, from Gavaskar to Richards, Tendulkar to Lara, no-one who's ever picked up a bat has scored three Test match triple centuries. In all of the history of the game, Sehwag has got almost as close anyone has. If he had scored seven more runs, the question would be moot already.

There is a certain tyranny to statistics. Seven runs, in the context of nine hundred, are neither here nor there, and yet statistics are an undoubted measure of greatness. There are batsmen - Border, Waugh [S], Tendulkar, Boycott, Chanderpaul, Dravid, Jayawardene - who are made great [albeit not exclusively] by them. Then there are batsmen who are ostensibly players of great innings - Lara and Viv Richards for example [which is not to deny the reach of their overall statistics]. There are others - Gower, Mark Waugh - whose aesthetic beauty overrode their stats.  There are yet more who were denied the chance but whose brilliance has them accepted anyway - Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock spring to mind. There are great partnerships - Greenidge and Haynes, Hayden and Langer. 

Then there is the notion of personality, best illustrated by the equivalency in stats between Shiv Chanderpaul and Viv Richards. Chanderpaul would certainly be more highly regarded if he had some of Richards' brooding aura.

So where does greatness leave Virender Sehwag? He has come of age in an Indian team containing three batsmen over whom the nation has obsessed. He is an avuncular and humble presence; he is more Inzy than King Viv physically. His average sets him alongside the greats, yet fifty is the new forty. He seems unconcerned by protecting or valuing his wicket. He even feels sorry for the bowlers he flays, not an emotion Boycott or Bradman usually bothered with.

And yet no-one has batted like Sehwag. Eleven consecutive times he turned centuries into scores of 150+, five of them went over 200 and two over 300. Last August but one in Sri Lanka, he carried his bat for 201 out of 329. He has made the game's greatest wicket-taker his bunny. He has scored the fastest 300 of all time. This is not just the stuff of greatness, it's the stuff of legend.

He may yet get another 300. His rarest talent is the ability to go on and on, to 'see ball, hit ball' for days on end. But even if he doesn't, I think history will see Sehwag as the avatar of a new era in batting, a transition between Tendulkar and Ponting and whatever comes next. He is a genius. He is undoubtedly, indisputably, ineffably great.

Separated at birth?

Virender Sehwag and BJ Penn.*

* UFC lightweight champion. He kicks ass, too. 

1200 grams: the magic number

At last. After just the 2,824 ODIs, something interesting from the post-match presentation. Simon Doull asked Virender Sehwag how much his bats weighed. Give that man a coconut. Sehwag misheard at first, but then revealed that they're 12oo grams.

I didn't know that subcontinental players used grams. It's kind of poetic. Reaching for the converter, that's 2lbs 10.32 oz. It's the .32 that makes all the difference. His career strike rate is now 101.66 over 199 innings. 

He wouldn't get in the England squad of course. His BMI is all a bit Samit Patel for that. You need to be fit in this game, like Ian Bell. 

Virender Sehwag and the Next Age

In certain sports at certain times come the avatars of its next age. They bring with them hints of what is possible, of how things will happen in the future. Arnold Palmer was one in golf. Sonny Liston was one in boxing. Arnold Schwarzenegger was one in bodybuilding (really, he was). Usain Bolt may be one in sprinting. Virender Sehwag might be cricket's newest.

We know the stats. In Tests he averages 51.85 with a strike rate of 78.12. That is 15 runs per 100 balls more than Pietersen, 20 more than Ponting, 21 more than Gayle. But what are the stats telling us?

To me, they are saying, 'this is how things will be'. Sehwag is the first, the fluke, the avatar. Behind him will come a new age of Test cricket, fed its players from the shorter game. They will be the first generation whose primary skill sets come from a new area. They will not be long-form players playing the short game. They will be short form players playing the long one. 

In Chennai the old met the new. Sehwag set up the win. Tendulkar, with what might be his last truly great innings, won it. They were ships that pass. In ten years, more people will bat with Sehwag's mindset than with Tendulkar's. The New Age is coming. He even has his own religion to prove it.