Horatio on a burning deck

"I just keep it simple. Watch the ball and play it on merit."
Sachin Tendulkar. November 1, 2007.

"You control each ball on its merit and stay put at the crease."
Rahul Dravid. May 1, 2004.

“I looked to play the ball on merit. It also came to the bat a lot better and once I was set, I played a few more shots.” Rahul Dravid. January 10, 2008.

For all the talk about playing each ball on its merit, the only Indian batsman who actually does that is Virender Sehwag. While everyone else about him plays the ball before it is bowled, producing spells of exaggerated defence and deference to the bowler, Sehwag marches to his own tune. His philosophy is simple - the first thought is to figure out whether he can score runs. If he cannot, then he defends it. Dravid often falls into the opposite rut and can't seem to get himself out of it. Lately, Tendulkar seems to have shelved the more cautious approach and it paid enormous dividends on the tour to Australia.

But when Dravid gets into the defensive rut, it sucks the life out of the rest of the innings. Dravid got to his century in 271 balls yesterday. I doubt that he can look at himself in the mirror and say that those 271 balls were worth only 100 runs. It just wasn't so.

On the third day of the first Test against South Africa, Sehwag scored 108 runs in 67 balls from lunch to tea. At one point he was batting at 172 with 4 overs to go for the tea break.

His last 14 balls were:
444.4411636414 - taking him to 218 at tea!!!

And those two sixes were off Mkhaya Ntini. He went from 193 to 199 with a 6. What a character. Dravid and Sehwag had a 96 run partnership in 102 balls at that point, of which Dravid made 10 runs in 56 balls while Sehwag contributed 84 runs in 46 balls.

Sehwag smashed 15 of the 16 runs in the last over before tea. The last ball was smashed to mid-off and as soon as he played the shot he turned and started walking to the pavilion before the ball reached the fence! Last over before tea!!! So much for the conventional wisdom of playing out the last few minutes before a break. On CriInfo, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan summed up the man, echoing most of what I felt.

At tea he had scored 218 of the 309 runs scored by India. What would India do without this dude at the top of the order?

When that was happening I sent an email to AV telling him that it was as if Sehwag was playing book cricket. To which AV replied, "Stop watching the highlights package!"

Aptly put - it truly felt like that. I hope Sehwag never loses that glint in his eye. He will fail at times and I just hope we have the patience to see him through those phases. More importantly, I hope he then works hard at playing through the strain and remembers the lessons he learnt during this innings.