For someone who grew up idolising Sachin Tendulkar, to get a chance to open the innings with him for Team India at the highest stage must have been like a dream come true. But Virender Sehwag knew he couldn’t have achieved success by trying to ape his idol. Hence he focussed on his own strengths and finished his career as one of India’s most successful Test openers ever and perhaps the team’s biggest match winner in the first decade of the 2000s.
“I can look like Sachin, play like him, but cannot perform like him. I changed my style of play once I realised this,” the first Indian cricketer to score a Test triple hundred said at the HT-Mint Asia Leadership Summit 2019. Sehwag broke into the Indian side on the back of his big-hitting abilities and went on to become a force to reckon with in both Tests and ODIs. He has more than 8000 runs to his credit in both these formats, a feat achieved only by the likes of Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid among Indian batting greats.
Talking about how he approached the game, Sehwag said that he just concentrated on hitting the ball, without worrying much about technique.
“More than technique and method, I concentrated on the ball and hitting, which has gained me a name…When every other cricketer was watching their game to learn from their mistakes, I was the one to play only 4s and 6s and enjoy my game,” the former India opener said in his inimitable nonchalant style.
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