Virender Sehwag: Bigger than the sum of his parts

When a great batsman retires, there is this immediate tendency to revisit the edifice he built, view the milestones he chalked up, trace the path he took on his way to cricketing immortality. It is, after all, natural to attempt arriving at a context, to seek a frame of reference which might help define the impact of a sporting career.

Virender Sehwag, however, is unique - he leaves us not only with double and triple hundreds, a scarcely believable strike rate in Tests and a redefinition of the art of opening a Test innings, but with a sense of undefinable magic, a lingering aftertaste of unattainable brilliance. A profound acceptance that the art of batting cannot always be probed with a microscope and analyzed threadbare.

Above all, his retirement reminds of the happiness he brought to Indian cricket. When Sehwag was at his best, there was no cricketer more loved by Indian fans, not even Sachin Tendulkar. Watching Viru bat was a sensory, emotive experience which elbowed out debate and inspired jaw-dropping awe.

Sehwag's genius is inexplicable because his style seemed to exist in a vacuum: no one, not even his great contemporaries in the side, could put a finger on his effectiveness, consistency and longevity. In his early days he looked like a Tendulkar clone, in appearance as well has in some of his strokeplay, and he did try to model his batting in his early years by watching Tendulkar bat on TV. He did not come from a cricketing gharana, so to speak. He lacked footwork and had obvious trouble against the short ball.

What he did have, though, was dollops of courage. He adjusted to the opening role and transmogrified into a tour de force of judicious audacity and exquisite skill. His batting was built on a careful foundation of rhythmical batswing, superb hand-eye coordination and a fierce desire to send the ball to the boundary .

He succeeded by maximizing his strengths and keeping his weaknesses tucked away in the bowler's blind spot. People always tended to underestimate his capabilities against the new ball, but a veneer of nonchalance helped Sehwag to keep the pressures at bay. At his peak, he had the mindset of an adventurer and the technique of a swordsman.

There was little margin for error when bowling to Sehwag because he knew his game better than anyone else and also treated it as sacred. Sehwag was bigger than the sum of his parts precisely because he disliked, and resisted, tinkering with his technique and approach. Like it or not, he had no interest in cricket history and no desire to measure up his game against past greats.

One of Sehwag's former captains once lamented how Viru needed to score "those ugly hundreds" when the buccaneering ways of youth no longer yielded high profit. It's not that Sehwag didn't know restraint: he once went an entire session without scoring a boundary during that magnificent match-saving knock in Adelaide.

But when fading eyesight, dipping form and selectorial apathy all became too much, people wanted Sehwag to remodel his game and become a more sedate run-getter, for they felt he still had runs left in him.

Sehwag had already decided, in the infinite wisdom that made him one of the greatest advertisements for Test cricket in the modern era, that he would be Sehwag or nothing. It was unlikely that we would see a Sehwag Version 2.0 emerge, for he lives as he batted - all instinct, wit and self-assurance. There was never any desperation in his approach.

As he leaves the stage, it time to acknowledge how big a success story it is for Indian cricket that Sehwag was given the opportunities he was to play it his way .

As for the magic, let it remain inscrutable - the image of a cover-driving Sehwag, a smile on his lips and a song in his heart, has been burnt into cricket history. A better question to ask would be: what did Sehwag mean to you?