"Six - forget, Miss – forget, Just Play" - Sehwagology

Simple thinking – “See the ball, hit the ball”, Simple technique – “No text book complication, just clean and class hitting”. Simple talk – “England is not Bangladesh, we have to play hard to get 20 wickets”. An amalgamation of all and it is Virender Sehwag for you. The Career that spanned breath-taking chutzpah and fearless batting has finally comes to an end.

He is the one who followed the primitive rules of cricket game in the finest way possible. It works on the simple funda that while the batsman tries to hit the ball and score runs, the bowler needs to get him out. Many developments have emerged as the game progressed over years and to be honest, the game of cricket has lost its original sheen. The cricket connoisseurs prefer the bookish cricket and even the new breed of cricketer’s skill-set is a result of nurturing through thousands of hours of practice. However, a typical cricket fanatic loves to watch the cricketers play in their true style and this is one of the reasons why the people love West Indies players most. They play in their own fashion and nobody can replicate that style and there is a lot of demand out there for this brand of cricket. Sehwag stays in the top list who have mastered this art of playing cricket in its true form.

While fans wanted him to be the next Sachin, he became one of his own kind. He craved a niche for himself with mind numbing brilliance. It is not the runs he scored, it was the brash style and attitude that made him stand out from the rest. The swagger and confidence has always put him on top of the game. Unlike many, Sehwag has written his own script throughout his career and executed it meticulously. While many cricketers tries to make their lives memorable, he tried to make it memorable for the cricket fraternity. He revolutionized the game of cricket and introduced a different brand of batting to the cricket fan. He changed the fortunes of openers in Test arena which was mostly filled with stay and survive mode till then. For a batsman with such ferocity, it’s difficult to imagine a mild mannered personality and this difficult combination taken its life through him.

Apart from his batting heroics, the one thing the stands out is his calmness and humility. He takes the highs and the lows in equal fashion. You can spot him looking disinterested after smacking the ball hard over the ropes and on another day he wears a smile after playing the worst shot. He served as a great ambassador for cricket by sporting humility and gamesmanship both off and on the field. He has always been in good books with media, sponsors etc.

Once retired, we quantify the cricketer’s journey in numbers which does the justice to some extent. The same cannot be applied in this case as the journey is more of an experience than anything else. His career is much more than any explanation and it was something special only for who had witnessed it in real time. The upper cuts and flashing square cuts will dearly miss him.

Post retirement, he is not an individual who questions himself about his contributions, the doubles & triples, or the match winning knocks. All he concerned about is “If he has entertained or not?” 

The Curious Case of Shane Watson

It is seldom that someone bid adieu to his test career and the game lovers still find his journey indecipherable. A career which was filled with more of a promise than delivery, more of a criticism than accolades and that is Shane Watson for you who had been always a mile behind from what had expected of him, especially in test cricket.

An unfilled promise

Talented, Debatable, Promising, Frustrating. Those four words sum up his career to a large extent. For much of his career, Watson was misused by the Cricket Australia, be it asking him to open knowing his discomfort with incoming deliveries or demanding long spells overlooking his injury prone body. While the management has seen him as an all-rounder of kallis level, he could do little justice to any of them.

Despite boasting an athletic figure and often looks like a right handed disciple of Mathew Hayden, Watson had to first beat his fragile body to withstand the demands of international cricket. His resilience was commendable all through his career despite his body threatened him to break up. It is tempting to say that had it not been for his persistent injuries, he might have been one among the greats. It’s not simple though, as his batting was plagued by his incomprehensible inability to handle the in-swinging delivery, and his bowling, even at its best, couldn’t match the likes of kallis and flintoff.

Watson offered an important bowling option that made him a curious case. A front-line batsman not pulling his weight with the bat, but easing the team’s burden with the ball. There were significant contributions but of little substance. Owing to his injury prone body, he should have modeled Steve Waugh, but tried to be a fast bowler, bowling faster than the mechanics that his body can deal with, may be at the behest of cricket Australia, which had hindered his career completely.

Leg Before Watson

Of late, it has become a standing joke that Watson plays round his front pad, the ball crashes into it at pace and the umpire raises his finger. Watson reviews it, almost for a laugh. He can no longer hold his spot when players of much better potential waiting on the fringes. A right decision at wrong time? May be or May not be. He will be forever remembered as perennial underachiever at test level.

Now he has two options at his disposal. Either, the sturdy, six-foot all-rounder can focus on ODI & T20I’s and hope to do some justice in the fag end of his career or focus on domestic Twenty20 cricket, to secure lucrative contracts around the world. Unfortunately, for a man with as blemished an injury record as Watson, the latter may seem the more feasible choice.

Some players are remembered as world cup winners, some as world record holders, but Watson will forever be remembered with LBW written after his name.