Ok SJS sir, here i go. Its alot, so take your time to answer...
Well. Yes thats a lot but I will answer. However, I will not answer every single sentence or every single reference to a match since that tends to miss the broader point and there is always a broader point. If there isn't one then the post/article under discussion isn't worth the paper its written on but if there is then the reader's mising it is not the writer's fault. So I will tell you what my broader point in that feature was and then try to address what you have said in that context.
I have said at the outset that I am a traditionalist. That should make it clear what I think of modern day cricket and the massive runs scored in today's game by today's batsmen including Sehwag. Everyone knows where I stand on this and wrote an earlier feature -
An Open Letter to the ICC - exactly based on my anguish for the state of affairs. You may not know but after Murali Vijay got out that day, I did not watch the rest of the second day's play. This has nothing to do with Sehwag but my disappointment with the types of wickets and the toothless bowling that batsmen face today. That Sehwag bats invariably on true bating surfaces, does not need an Einstein to discover. This feature was beyond that accepted fact.
I also know the flaws in Sehwag's batting and have mentioned his weakness to the incoming ball but that's like talking of Bradman's weakness against the sharp in-swing of Alec Bedser which is well recorded. The fact remains that there were not enough bowlers in the Don's twenty year long career to exploit it enough to make him look like an ordinary player. The same, as I have clearly indicated in the feature is the case with Sehwag. I quote from my feature.
Yes it can leave him vulnerable to the sharply in coming delivery but let the bowlers around the world exploit it often enough to hurt him and then lets see how he responds to a new and real threat.
Every batsman, howsoever great, will have weaknesses but if they remain unexploited due to the quality of bowlers or the type of wickets that widely prevail (or a combination of both) we have to accept that as a given and assess the player on the basis of what the rest of the cricketing world confronts him with. Otherwise we leave ourselves open to the same criticism as is now made of all those who criticised Bradman, with absolutely valid arguments mind you, of being weak on sticky wickets. This is what that feature was about. A player taking full advantage of the favourable conditions he faced and playing the percentages smartly, not just while facing a ball or in an innings, but even in an overall career.
This particular feature was turning out to be even longer than it is. I will put here one of the bits I removed.
I have always felt sad that Larwood never played again for England and Bradman wasn’t tested with more truly fast stuff again. Not because I think Bradman wasn’t up to it but because I value a contest between an immovable object and an irresistible force much more than a tantalising figure like 99.94. ICC is today denying the current generation, and maybe future ones, of the real great cricket which can only come when a great batsman and a great bowler face each other on a level playing field.
The last Sri Lanka India Test may have been an occasion to toast Sehwag, truly a modern day great but for me that innings and that match was sad because I saw one of the game’s all time great bowlers being given the hiding of his life when we should have been toasting the end of a great career and a great era in spin bowling.
I wish that the world's best batsmen, not just Sehwag, were faced with the best spinners, and on spiteful wickets, fast bowlers like Imran ,Hadlee and Lillee in conditions that promoted sharp lateral movement. Only then would we know what truly great batting is all about. That is why Gavaskar 95 in losing cause in his last Test innings is also considered his finest. Unfotunately, as I wrote, we need to use Sehwag's batting . . .
his phenomenal success and his fantastic strike rate to understand what is happening to our game.
Not only are wickets far more batsmen friendly, the bats are better and the boundaries getting smaller. The risks associated with unorthodox batting are much reduced. The definition of percentage cricket has changed. Modern day conditions are perfect for more aggressive methods. They are also the graveyards of bowlers. This is what Sehwag has shown us.
I too do not like the fact that bowlers are slaughtered the way they are but that's not Sehwag's doing. Its also not going to change any day soon unless ICC decides to restore the balance between bat and ball.
The feature does not deny the easy conditions for batsmen as they exist but uses Brdaman's example to show why we should not decry Sehwag's making best use of it just as we have, over time, learnt not to decry Bradman's doing the same in a different context.
People seem to forget how easy batting conditions were in Bradman's time. Even in his first ever Test series (at home 1928-29), 6826 runs were scored in those five Tests ! Ten batsmen (five on each side) averaged above fifty, two of them above hundred. Another two averaged in the 40's and eight others in the 20's and 30's ! This is amazing run getting. The series had no draws but that was because the Tests lasted till they ended. The second Test lasted six days, the third and fourth lasted seven days and the final test ended on the eighth day ! Surely those wickets were not just made to last but they did. The fourth innings scores in the last three Tests were 332, 336 and 287.
England won the series with a decisive 4-0 margin and were leading 4-0 at the end of the fourth Test and yet their leading new ball bowlers Larwood and Tate averaged in the 40's. For Australia there best bowler and by far the leading wicket taker, Grimmett averaged 44.5 for his 23 wickets.
The point I am making is not to compare Sehwag with Bradman or the bowlers of those times with those we have today but to show that whenever batting tracks appear as they have more often than not since the 1920's, the batsmen will make merry. Hammond, England's greatest batsman barring Jack Hobbs scored 904 runs in that series. He never did it again.
Coming to Sehwag's performance on helpful tracks or in difficult conditions as you have mentioned, without going into specifics, my point remains, I have conceded that "
a more defensive batsman may last longer in more bowler friendly conditions" but, as I have gone on to say,
"Unless bowler friendly wickets become the norm there does not seem any reason for Sehwag to temper his aggression".
So I accept that his present style of batting will be found wanting in bowler friendly conditions. I don,t need to be told that. In fact, I bemoan the fact that such conditions do not exist. I wish they did so that not just Sehwag but even the Tednulkar's and Pontings besides the lesser batsmen of the day, had to raise their game a few notches higher and that would be cricket I would wake up whole nights to watch. Today I dont watch it much even though I am retired. So I am not in disagreement about batting tracks, his relative vulnerability in bowling conditions but why should he not bat like he does if such conditions are so rare that he can averages in the fifties, score double and triple hundreds and do it at a run a ball?
Thats all I am trying to say.
