The smiling assasin hangs up his boots

Statistics can only partly justify Sehwag's contribution to cricket, his impact on the game truly set him apart

With Virender Sehwag calling it a day, one of the pillars of Indian cricket over the last decade and a half has bowed out of the game. It was only a matter of time before the announcement came, as Sehwag had spent the last two and a half years on the sidelines and with hopes of a comeback virtually extinguished. His last year international career was 2012, and although he did play a couple of Test matches in 2013, it was a disappointing conclusion. But that should take nothing away from his pure brilliance.
 
For a man who became one of the most destructive opening batsmen of cricket, Sehwag surprisingly began his Test and ODI career as a middle-order batsman who could bowl a bit of off-spin. It was during the 2001 ODI Tri-Series in Sri Lanka, when Sehwag was pushed to the opening slot. He made an instant impact scoring a century off just 69 deliveries against New Zealand in one of the games.

 
However, Sehwag had a greater impact as a Test match batsman, not just on his own cricket, but also on the way the cricket of that era was played. During the Test series in England in 2002 he was promoted to the opening slot in Tests for the first time. He made 84 in the First Test and then struck a century in the second Test at Nottingham. That was the first of many big scores he was going to score batting in that position.
 

The former Essex and England medium-pacer Derek Pringle, now a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, chose Sehwag over many other distinguished names, for his choice as the cricketer of the decade (2000-2009). Pringle justified his selection by arguing that while other cricketers had better statistics, none came close to Sehwag when it came to changing perceptions about the game. And former Australian captain Ian Chappell,  who can be a hard man to impress, wrote as far back as 2004 that Sehwag’s style of batting could make the great Sir Vivian Richards look like a blocker.

 
Both Pringle and Chappell were right for Sehwag revolutionised batting, at least in Tests. The measure of this can be had not just from the numbers you find in the runs and average column. He was the antithesis of the traditional Test match opening batsman who would give the first few overs to the bowlers before settling in. If Sehwag got in, he could effectively finish the contest by knocking the opposition’s best bowlers off their rhythm even before they could settle in. This ability to demoralize bowling attacks was often of far more significance than statistics.
 
This is not to say that his stats were bad. Far from it. In 104 Tests he made 8,586 runs at an average of 49.34, only marginally less than the 50 which is considered the hallmark of greatness. He also made 23 centuries, a very good number for any batsman. In ODIs, he made 8,273 runs in 251 games with 15 centuries. More pertinently, among those batsmen with than 7,000 Test runs, Sehwag’s strike rate of 82.23 is by far the best. It’s one thing to have such impressive statistics to place yourself in the league of the best in the world, but to do it with such a high strike rate is what makes Sehwag’s career all the more extraordinary.

 
Sehwag has two triple centuries and a 293 in Test cricket, but the benchmark with which experts and the fan measure him is his ruthless aggression. His bat was like a sword punishing even good deliveries but he never looked a slogger. Remember the blitzkrieg he unleashed in Chennai against England in 2008? Chasing a mammoth target of 387 in 119 overs, which if successful would have been the fourth highest run chase of all-time, Sehwag tore into the English bowling attack comprising Steve Harmison, James Anderson, Monty Panesar, Graeme Swann and Andrew Flintoff --  all of whom fairly accomplished bowlers -- and knocked 83 off just 68 deliveries. By the time he was dismissed, India was 117 in the 23rd over. The asking rate had been brought down and the bowlers knocked off their rhythm. India won that game, fair and square.

 
If there’s any criticism of Sehwag’s career, it's that he never quite maximised his enormous potential in ODI cricket. That is a fairly harsh thing to say about a player with 15 centuries, but many feel Sehwag was made for limited-overs cricket and could have done a lot more. That said, when Sehwag made an ODI double hundred (219) against West Indies in Indore in 2011 -- then a world record – it was something that seemed only expected of him ever since he began his career a decade earlier.
 
But the wow factor with Sehwag was greater as a Test cricketer, because he batted in a manner which was completely awe-inspiring and he generated success at the same time. In ODI cricket there have been many to rival Sehwag but in the 5-day format, there was none like him. He was, without doubt, one of the world’s most influential cricketers in the last 15 years.