He might be known to have unflinchingly stuck to his ‘see the ball and hit it’ batting approach irrespective of match situations in his playing days, but former India opener Virender Sehwag says that he made changes in his techniques early in his career to emulate iconic Sachin Tendulkar.
“When I was growing up, I played a lot of 10- and 12-over games, I would bat in middle order. I got only 10-odd balls to face and I tried to score as much as I could. I applied the same approach in domestic and international cricket and people were appreciating my strike rate being more than 80 or 90 in Test cricket,” Sehwag said when asked if his approach changed how batsmen opened the innings in a fundamental way.
“I was just playing my game and not thinking that I have to score quickly or do something different except when I joined the team and wanted to bat like Tendulkar. I realised there could be only one Tendulkar and I changed my stance and backlift. I realised I should change my game and I did it.
After that, I was playing with my own technique,” he told ‘Cricinfo’.
Sehwag, now 37, last played for India in 2013 after scoring 8586 runs from 104 Tests and 8273 runs from 251 ODIs.
Asked if there was only one Sehwag as well, he said, “Yes, because of my mindset and the impact I had on the team but there was only one Tendulkar.”
Sehwag, who recently shifted to Haryana from Delhi in domestic cricket, agreed that many state associations were not run efficiently.
“Yes. It’s not just Delhi. There are other associations which have problems. You need to change things at U-19 and U-16 level because that’s problem area. If you pick over-age players, it is a problem that needs to be identified. If you have a player whose name and stature is big, you won’t have this problem,” he said.
Asked if he wants to play a role in state associations, he said, “No, there is a conflict of interest. I have my Sehwag International School. So I cannot be a part of it. I cannot be a selector but if any association wants me to be a part of it, I would love to do that. There are other cricketers who have a reputation but they are not getting the opportunity to be a part of the selection panels.
“What is happening is that the guys in power introduce names to the selectors and the selectors then act according to these people’s whims,” he said.
The spot-fixing scandal in the IPL has rocked the cricketing world like never before, but Sehwag would still bat for the cash-rich T20 event, saying that it was the right platform for youngsters to get noticed.
“I think it is a platform for a young Indian player. If you look at 2000-01, when I joined the team, we took 20 games to get used to international cricket. Now, someone like Shikhar Dhawan, who has played in IPL, is used to the pace, and he scored 180-odd on Test debut against Australia. When I or Yuvraj joined, our game was not great and we took 20-25 games to score 150 or 100. Look at KL Rahul. He went to Australia and got a hundred in his second Test there. That’s the impact IPL has had on a domestic player.
“There has been the negative impact of spot-fixing and match-fixing but it is the individual player’s responsibility to look after that because if a player wants to do that it is difficult to stop him. It is the individual player’s responsibility to play fairly,” he reasoned.
“Players like Ravindra Jadeja, Yusuf Pathan, Warner, Glenn Maxwell were noticed at IPL first. It is a platform for players all over the world. If a player is playing IPL and earning money, it’s not his fault that he’s not playing for India. He is not quitting. He is playing first-class, one-day cricket and IPL. If selectors don’t pick him, what can he do?”
Sehwag said he decided not to not play in IPL as he was no longer aiming for an India berth.
