The greatest batting you will ever see in your lifetime!
Few of us saw Sir Viv Richards at his peak. They say he gave the ball a mighty thump. However, the footage that we see of him today is poor, as it does not give one the true feel of his power. Yesterday, if you tuned in between lunch and tea for the Test between India and South Africa at Chennai, you probably had your best chance of seeing Sir Viv again.
There was a familiar banner at the ground yesterday when the opening partnership hit 200/0 - "South Africa - please take two wickets today, we want to see Sachin!" At the start of the day, it felt like a funny slogan, by the end of it, Graeme Smith might've seriously considered reporting the banner to the match referee!
This is an era of great Indian batsmen - Sachin, Laxman, Dravid & Ganguly.
Each a sight to watch when in full flow Yet, if one can find one flaw, it is that once they get going, you sense the outside chance that they might play a rash shot, or mistime something, or, worst of all, get out to a "soft" dismissal. In short, there's always this slight fear/hope at the back of your mind that they might get out the next ball.
Yesterday, Sehwag unwrapped an an innings that not just put to rest any such fears, it obliterated it! Some might say it was a flat, dead track & that the bowlers lacked penetration. They don't know what they're talking about. Yesterday, was singly the greatest, most brutal, savage butchering of a Test bowling attack ever recorded.
It's not as much that he scored quickly, it was the utter disdain with which each ball was treated. Let me re-emphasize that "each ball" - I mean that quite literally. Beyond a point, South Africa ran out of ideas, and just waited for the Earth to turn so they could get off the field. Bowlers trundled in, threw the ball at the batsman, and immediately turned back.
You could see that Sehwag didn't care a hang whether he got out, he was going after the ball - everybody knew this & no one could do anything about it. Nothing epitomised it as much as the last ball before tea. Everyone knew that Sehwag would, in all probability be going for it. He thumped Ntini's ball over extra cover, and turned back to the pavilion as the ball left the bat, as if saying "Frankly, I don't give a damn!". It was batting free from burden - of pressure, of statistics, of match situation, of bowling attack, of opposition. It was Zen. It was batting Nirvana. There was just the ball and Sehwag, and that's all that mattered!
There was a familiar banner at the ground yesterday when the opening partnership hit 200/0 - "South Africa - please take two wickets today, we want to see Sachin!" At the start of the day, it felt like a funny slogan, by the end of it, Graeme Smith might've seriously considered reporting the banner to the match referee!
This is an era of great Indian batsmen - Sachin, Laxman, Dravid & Ganguly.
Each a sight to watch when in full flow Yet, if one can find one flaw, it is that once they get going, you sense the outside chance that they might play a rash shot, or mistime something, or, worst of all, get out to a "soft" dismissal. In short, there's always this slight fear/hope at the back of your mind that they might get out the next ball.
Yesterday, Sehwag unwrapped an an innings that not just put to rest any such fears, it obliterated it! Some might say it was a flat, dead track & that the bowlers lacked penetration. They don't know what they're talking about. Yesterday, was singly the greatest, most brutal, savage butchering of a Test bowling attack ever recorded.
It's not as much that he scored quickly, it was the utter disdain with which each ball was treated. Let me re-emphasize that "each ball" - I mean that quite literally. Beyond a point, South Africa ran out of ideas, and just waited for the Earth to turn so they could get off the field. Bowlers trundled in, threw the ball at the batsman, and immediately turned back.
You could see that Sehwag didn't care a hang whether he got out, he was going after the ball - everybody knew this & no one could do anything about it. Nothing epitomised it as much as the last ball before tea. Everyone knew that Sehwag would, in all probability be going for it. He thumped Ntini's ball over extra cover, and turned back to the pavilion as the ball left the bat, as if saying "Frankly, I don't give a damn!". It was batting free from burden - of pressure, of statistics, of match situation, of bowling attack, of opposition. It was Zen. It was batting Nirvana. There was just the ball and Sehwag, and that's all that mattered!
posted by Firebringer at 4:57 PM
3 Comments:
Hope he continues in the same vein today and gets past 400 :)
By his own admission, he was motivated because of being dropped. I don't know why it's so common that players often need that sort of treatment before they start delivering the goods!
Unfortunately, my Tata Sky plan doesn't have Neo... so I'll have to buy a DVD of this innings later sometime :D Though I was following the live scoreboard with text commentary on cricinfo! haha!
If India want to be the top team that they think they can be (and rightly so), they need to find motivation out of themselves. You don't need a wallop at the WC to win the 20-20 WC. You don't need to get sledged to start playing well. You shouldn't need to be dropped to hit triple hundreds.
Ahh...alas! His run quota has now been completed for the next 5-6 innings!
BTW, just blogged!
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