Sport

Leaving the bowlers flummoxed

Chennai: Changing the mind-set of the bowlers from attempting to pick wickets to adopting defensive tactics is the foremost attribute of Virender Sehwag. The field spreads and it becomes a whole new ball game.

Irrespective of the nature of the Chepauk pitch, the pressure was on India when the host began its reply in the last session on day two. South Africa had runs on the board, its pacemen were fresh and the Indians could have been tired after spending the best part of two days on the field under the scorching sun.

Sehwag turned on the heat and the game changed shades. His value in the top-order is immense.

He continued to blaze away on the third day morning. The pacemen were pounded past the ropes and the fielders were left chasing leather.

The hunter had become the hunted.

Soon, left-arm spinner Paul Harris bowled a negative line from over the wicket. Sehwag reverse-swept the spinner from outside his leg-stump. From a psychological perspective, the stroke made a great statement.

Sehwag will never please the purists. His rear foot does not travel back and across as the coaching manuals prescribe. Rather, he moves back in a straight line before launching into his strokes.

As a result, he plays beside the line of the ball, rather than getting behind it. The method has its flaws but provides Sehwag greater room to slam or manoeuvre the ball through the off-side.

Much of Sehwag’s game, one of hand-eye coordination, relies on subtle body alignment. In this context, Sehwag’s greater fitness has been critical to his re-discovery of form. He has shed weight and is able to get into better position.

Sehwag’s successes in varying conditions and surfaces, including the seaming pitches with bounce in South Africa and Australia, the swinging ball in England, the tracks of varying bounce in the West Indies, takes us to the great debate on footwork.

Former Pakistani great Majid Khan told this correspondent several summers ago that the importance of footwork was exaggerated.

“It’s more about body balance,” he had said.

Aren’t footwork and balance related? “No,” was the answer from Majid, who too was not a great exponent of footwork in his playing days.

Sehwag’s feet movement might have flaws but he has a few things going for him. His head is still as he wades into the bowling — a factor that enhances balance — and he generates tremendous bat speed.

He has, however, been troubled by lifting deliveries directed into his body. In the event, even on a surface as placid as the one at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium, the South African pacemen could have bounced at Sehwag from round the wicket.

However, the pacemen require precision to escape punishment while attempting this tactic. Given the slightest width, Sehwag will despatch the ball in the arc between third man and point.

He is also a batsman who can alter his style to suit the occasion.

When Harris operated over the wicket, Sehwag opened up his stance and shortened his back-lift — it was almost non-existent — to counter the ploy.

These are days when Sehwag relishes the open spaces of Tests rather than the inner ring of the ODIs. Paradoxically, for an attacking batsman, he finds greater freedom in the game’s longer version.

To an already sun-lit Chepauk, he brought even more brightness. For the South Africans, though, he was a nightmare in daylight.

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