Column

The Adelaide curator’s forecast that it will be a traditional batting-friendly pitch must be music to Virender Sehwag’s ears, because his technique as an opening batsman has been badly exposed on this tour with six low scores in a row. In fact, if you dig a little deeper into his record on pitches with a bit of lateral movement for the quicks, the picture is even more dismal: he averages less than 30 in his last 20 odd innings in Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand. And in between, he smashed the highest ever score in the history of one-day cricket at Indore just the other day; so it goes to show that it isn’t as if he’s woefully out of form, just that he can only succeed as an opener in a suitable environment.

His fifty-plus Test batting average has been built mostly on flat tracks, with only the odd big innings in tricky conditions, and even those have dried up in the last two years, with bowlers figuring out where to pitch it to him when there’s some grass on the wicket. Any well pitched up ball on the off stump that deviates out or in has him caught behind or LBW time and again, rooted as he is to the crease when he presents a defensive bat.

No longer are bowlers feeding him with short-of-a-length stuff outside off stump in the hope that he will get caught at point or hole out to third man. Nor do they bother digging it into his ribs. They know where he is vulnerable on these pitches and are relentless in their line and length; so whatever Sehwag does, whether he comes out swinging or plays a waiting game, it seems only a matter of time before he nicks one to the slips or misses one that comes into his pads.

So what can Sehwag do? Well, obviously he can hope that India bats second at Adelaide when the pitch is likely to be at its most docile. But in the long run, for him to succeed as an opener abroad, he has to change his ways. It just doesn’t wash any more to say that he should be left to play his ‘natural game’ because he has a healthy batting average. There should be different averages for different conditions, then the truth will be out.

When Sehwag first converted from a middle order bat to an opener, first in one-dayers and then in Tests, sceptics like Geoff Boycott predicted that he would not last long in that position. For somebody like Boycott, who learnt his batting in the seaming conditions of Headingley in England, it was anathema to think that an opener would just stand and deliver, neither moving his front foot forward to narrow the angles on a good length ball, nor moving back and across to play the short-of-a-length ball as late as possible. But, for a time, it seemed Boycott and others had just not reckoned with Sehwag’s hand-eye co-ordination which made all technical matters redundant.

It’s quite clear now, however, that a combination of poor bowling tactics and relatively easier wickets contributed to Sehwag’s success. Even in Australia on the last tour, the pitches were flatter. This time, with the use of drop-in pitches, they retained a fair covering of live grass even in the heat of the Aussie summer.

One could argue that the Aussie opener David Warner too is not a technical virtuoso, but has blustered his way through with Sehwag-like tactics. The difference is that Warner has been standing out of the crease and reaching forward to hammer balls on the rise. Sehwag’s way is to hang back and slash if it’s short or drive if it’s up to him. The in-between length has found him out. It looks like he has two choices: either get his feet moving to negate the swing and seam, or go back to where he came from: the middle order.