Virendar Sehwag’s strength stems from his feeling of self-belief. He obviously has unwavering faith in himself and his brand of cricket. All the while he was going through a drought of runs, several critics called him irresponsible in getting out to extravagant shots. But Sehwag never deviated from his extravagant style and reliance on aggressive strokeplay every time he took the crease, irrespective of the situation the team was facing. Umpire David Shepherd was right when he commented, “He plays such a high-risk game that there is always a chance of him getting out quickly.” But, while Sehwag takes enormous risks in his batting, he is certainly not reckless and his technique is intrinsically sound. In his Chepauk triple hundred itself his runs came from a variety of cuts, pulls, drives, reverse sweeps, gentle tapping of the ball to third man and, of course, his favourite upper cut.

As long as Sehwag is at the crease he must totally demoralise the fielding side, and leave the bowler with very few choices on where or what to bowl. Indian bowlers in the past have, for instance, dreaded the assault on them that Shahid Afridi was known for. But, overall Sehwag is technically a far superior batsman and, in terms of the ability to handle any type of bowling, equally devastating. His reliability as a player, including the lean spell he has been through in the last couple of years, is revealed by his batting statistics. He has played so far a total of 55 Test matches and batted in 92 innings, with a total score of 4760 runs and an average of 53.48. In this impressive display he has hit 684 boundaries and 49 sixes. Corresponding figures for one-day internationals include 183 matches, 178 innings, in which he has batted with a total of 5312 runs and an average of 31.06, with 728 boundaries and 75 sixes. He has hit 14 centuries in Tests and seven in ODIs.

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