Sehwag has defined batting as an Art and Science;art in his grace despite being brutal,science with out appearing to be deliberate.More important he enjoys hitting the ball not bothering about his scores as he has stated’ball is there to be hit’.
Comparison with Tendulkar is not correct.Both belong to different classes as Richards and Gavaskar.
NEW DELHI: Even as fans in the city gear up to watch Virender Sehwag in action on home ground on Sunday, international accolades keep pouring in
Day in Pics: December 26
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for the modern-day great. Days after noted columnist Peter Roebuck featured him in his star XI of the year, calling him “a great batsman” , “impudent but rarely imprudent” and “among the most devastating openers the game has ever known”, Britain’s Daily Telegraph, known for its sports coverage, has anointed him the ‘cricketer of the decade’.
Former England player Derek Pringle, while justifying the decision, has written: “Dashing openers have always been with us… but nobody has managed to do it with the audacity and frequency of Sehwag. Two triple and four double hundreds in a 72-Test career is a weighty achievement for one who bats as if needing to catch the last plane out of Kabul.”
Pringle goes on to add: “To many, the choice will appear controversial. Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Jacques Kallis, Sachin Tendulkar, have all excelled over the past 10 years. They all announced their brilliance in the 90s, so were discounted.”
Describing Sehwag’s breathtaking shot-making, Pringle says: “There is a high-risk element to his shot-making… and yet there is an appetite for runs at odds with the thrill-seeker in him that chases boundaries. When he first appeared, bowlers consoled themselves that while humiliation was likely, it would be brief. They cannot bank on that now as age and experience have sharpened his judgment to the point that a hundred no longer sates him.
“Like many of the great ball strikers, he scarcely moves his feet when he bats, relying on the kind of hand-eye coordination that raptors would be proud of. For bowlers… Sehwag is the bogeyman who brings nightmares.”
Comparing him to another Indian great, Tendulkar, Pringle concludes that “Sehwag has been, by far, the more enriching. He should be better known than he is, even in India, but for the monopoly of Tendulkar”.
Pringle makes it clear in his article that he has not gone purely by statistics to find his player of the decade. “Statisticians and the government policy-makers trust figures, wise men, facts, but I’m going to apply another measure: that of redefining the role they play, something Virender Sehwag has done for opening the batting in Test matches,” he writes.
Another interesting bit is the former England medium-pacer’s description of Sehwag’s personality and how he makes the bowlers fear him. “Not much taller than Tendulkar’s 5ft 5in, Sehwag, now 31, is nondescript, a short, balding roly-poly man, who could be running a Delhi shoe shop. It is only when he swings his bat and the ball rockets past cover to the boundary that his aura is transformed into a Viv Richards-like menace and bowlers begin to tremble.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/top-stories/Sehwag-cricketer-of-the-decade/articleshow/5382800.cms
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