Sharjah: Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag was one of the most entertaining and flamboyant batsmen. His strokes were breathtaking and so was his approach to the game.
In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, Sehwag, here as brand ambassador for the Ten Premier League (10PL), spoke about his game through anecdotes from his gully cricket days — from breaking his neighbour’s windowpanes and then rising to break the hearts of international bowlers and win a place in the hearts of cricket fans.
“It’s not me alone. Take any big names in international cricket and they’ve all started from gully cricket before moving to big grounds, then first class, Under-19 and become international stars. So I’m glad to hear that gully cricket is back in Sharjah and people are responding in a big way, and am also happy to be associated with it. My memories of playing gully cricket have always been exciting. Those days many would come and tell me, “Stop playing, you are not going to be a (Sachin) Tendulkar or (Sunil) Gavaskar; so please don’t break our windows”.
“Nobody expected that one day I would become a ‘Sehwag’ and give an interview on gully cricket.”
Soon after Sehwag started playing with a cricket ball, he broke his tooth with a ball that hit him on his mouth. Does he regret not continuing playing gully cricket with a tennis ball?
“I was scared after the cricket ball hit my tooth,” he admits.
“For two days nobody knew that half my tooth had broken. I avoided talking and eating because I was scared that my parents may not allow me to play cricket again. They learnt about it only after a friend came home and asked my mother about my tooth. Fortunately my parents supported me despite that incident and the rest is history.”
Sehwag definitely made bowlers nervous when he went out to bat.
But the shoe was never on the foot, as he insists he never got nervous when facing any bowler or going out to play a match.
“No … because whenever I was in good form I was not worried about bowlers,” he said.
“I was only concerned about how I would react to the ball.
“I was only worried about being able to pick the ball early. In international cricket everybody bowls quick; so if I am able to pick the ball early I get more time to react. Before a match I always made sure to watch videos of the bowlers on how they bowl the out-swinger, in-swinger, slower ones and bouncers.
“I keep that in my mind and the moment he changes his action and tries a different thing, I was ready for it,” Sehwag revealed.
Sehwag does not believe his strokes were out of the books.
“I believe that whatever strokes I played were in the books. I’ve practised hard and mastered them. Everybody has seen Sehwag on television but no one has seen what I’ve done behind the scenes practicing for hours mastering my strokes like the upper cut, square cut and big shots.”
The master stroke player then went on to reveal a secret. “I did a lot of shadow practice in my room when no one was watching me. Many a times I have spent hours in shadow practice.”
And did the cheers from the crowd motivate him to hit sixes?
“If I say no, I would be lying. If I am playing in front of 50,000 people and they keep shouting out to me asking for sixes, sometimes I go with the crowd. But sometimes you’ve got to tell yourself that this is not the right time to take the risk. But most of time I have gone with the crowd’s voice.”
Sachin Tendulkar was Sehwag’s role model — and batting alongside him had more benefits than you might think, he admitted.
“Tendulkar was my role model and I loved to bat with him,” Sehwag said. “The benefit of batting with him is that all the bowlers would be concentrating to get him out and not me and I could quietly score my runs. His best suggestion was to make sure that after every game I check my grip and back lift.”
