Even as Sehwag, who has been finding his touch in the Indian Premier League, prepares to welcome the Chennai Super Kings and its brand ambassador Srikkanth in Delhi, the duo share what goes on in the minds of attacking opening batsmen. And both of them assert that it’s not pre-meditated swipes that have got them success.

“It can’t be pre-meditated at any stage,” says Sehwag. “If I tell myself that I will hit the ball over covers, how can I play a shot if the ball lands on my leg-stump? You have to see the ball and decide very quickly in your mind where to play the shot. The only thing that is pre-meditated sometimes is that I decide to hit every ball that comes my way. The best thing about players like Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya is that they tend to pick the ball very early from the hand.”

Srikkanth agrees. “Our shots come naturally to us, so there’s no need to pre-meditate that. I was an instinctive player, who played particular shots and I backed myself. I had a simple thought in my mind always, that I need to attack to survive the fast bowlers of my era, so all my shots came naturally to me, even from my school days,” says Srikkanth.

Thought process

Sehwag explains that there are a lot of calculations involved. “I know what shots can be played because I have a basic understanding of the pitch, the hardness of the track and the bounce it will have. If it has a lot of bounce, then you can assume that bowlers will bowl a lot into the body and shots like the cut and pull are always on. Similarly, if the bowler has just been hit for a four on a length ball, you can expect him to bowl back of a length. We always try and anticipate what’s running through the bowler’s mind,” he says. “But the most important thing is to play our natural game, no matter what,” adds Sehwag.

Message for Srikkanth

Srikkanth recalls numerous team meetings he was part of with Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, where the team dwelled on the need to understand the match situation and play according to that. “But the best part came after that. Both Gavaskar and Kapil used to take me out after the meeting to ask if I followed anything that was said. When I said yes, they’d say, ‘Please don’t understand, because all that was discussed was not for you, it was for everybody else. You play you natural game’,” he laughs.

Mutual admiration

“Obviously, there’s a high element of risk involved in our style of play. I would have played great innings in three out of 10 innings and on those occasions, I would have won the match for India. But Viru is better than me, he has more consistency and can win six out of 10 games. He has a better temperament than me,” he declares. “I am a huge fan of Sehwag.”

The feelings are reciprocated. “I remember watching him in the 1992 World Cup. That I was the first time I watched live cricket on television. It’s very difficult to explain the shots he played. He used to play over point, play the pull-shot... at that time nobody thought of batting like that — scores of 200-220 were declared safe, but that changed immediately,” says Sehwag.

Nowadays, scores of 200-220 are not safe even in Twenty20 games, and that has put a lot of pressure on players in the Sehwag mould. “The pressure is not about performing, I know that I will get a century or a fifty in one game or the other. The pressure is to win all the matches,” he says, even as his Delhi Daredevils prepare for battle against Chennai in a crucial battle to regain top slot in the points table.