• News
  • 'Virender Sehwag was like butter chicken'
This story is from October 25, 2015

'Virender Sehwag was like butter chicken'

Simple, surprising - and sheer genius
'Virender Sehwag was like butter chicken'
Simple, surprising - and sheer genius
Years ago, I escorted an associate of mine to meet the great musician Ilayaraja. My colleague was full of the latest post-modern nonsense and determined to impress the musician. We sat casually in a room in Prasad Studios, Chennai and while I savoured the moment, my associate sprang into attack.
He turned to Ilayaraja and asked, "Where do you stand between Stravinsky and John Cage?" The question was both pompous and funny and Ilayaraja smiled.
He answered in Tamil. "What is that? Is it sweet? Can you buy me some? I love sweets." The musician then quietly explained, "Music is God's gift. I do not know what happens. It is like asking a river why do you flow." The interview was a disaster but the opening moments were memorable.
READ ALSO
Sourav Ganguly sacrificed his opening spot for me: Virender Sehwag
Reading the notes of farewell to Virender Sehwag, I remembered this story, because Sehwag, like Ilayaraja, was a natural genius not subject to the straitjacket of methods. Trying to reduce him to a set of techniques - a scienticized collection of dos and don'ts - was a waste of time. As one of my teenage friends put it cheekily, laughing at my attempts to capture Sehwag, "he was like Maggi sauce. It is different. Only the quality of difference is so difficult to catch."


I find the cricket of this current generation a bit dull. My era had Indian cricket flowering in its diversity. There was a Sachin, a Dravid, a Ganguly, a Laxman, and to that dream quartet, one inevitably added Sehwag. When these five were in flow, Indian cricket was like a symphony; the team sounded like a team but each player had his individual genius, a combination of style and substance difficult to match today. Each was a master in his own way and each demonstrated character in his own inimitable style.
In fact, there is an apocryphal story of the gods coming down to bestow gifts, talents, on this quintet of legends. The gods first turn to Sachin and grant him the bounty of genius. Long life. Longer creativity. His life as a cricketer and cricket in his life would rhyme. Focus, Concentration, Commitment, a great family and a greater coach were showered on him. Then the gods looked at Dravid and gave him the touch of integrity, of leadership, the ability to think through the game, the stamina to stay on and added grace. To Ganguly, an unruly baby, they gave confidence, the power to inspire, a killer's instinct, an ability to be at ease on all occasions. Then came Laxman.They gave him the gift of character, a sense of epic, the sense of bodily grace, a wristy talent. In fact, so generous were the gods they had run out of gifts when they came to the last baby. He looked cherubic. They gazed at him in wonder and a touch of embarrassment. They looked and predicted he needed no muse except Bollywood cinema. He was a natural, there was nothing to add. Bholu alias Sehwag, just was.
READ ALSO
Virender Sehwag: 'Sultan of Multan'
In fact, if two people understood him, they were Bedi and Ganguly, two of the finest leaders of Indian cricket. Bedi realized Sehwag was unique and singular. He called him the Victor Trumper of Indian cricket. The comparison was superbly apt. Sehwag, like Trumper a generation earlier, was singular. If Sachin bordered on Bradman, Sehwag was Trumper. Unique. Singular. Epic. A pleasure to watch and a privilege to remember.
Ganguly who helped make Sehwag more Sehwag-like, recounted a story. Facing a formidable score, a colossal 325 in a Natwest series, Ganguly walked in tense to find Sehwag whistling nonchalantly. The captain asks him to concentrate and Sehwag replies that India would win the game and win they did. Ganguly remarked that Sehwag was a mindset. One could not re-educate him or reconstitute him. He had the basics, and to it he added his own genius. He played a different dialect of cricket not too amenable to technique or coaching.
There was a cocky simple confidence to him. It is as if he responded to a different drummer or spoke a different dialect. When Laxman had scored his legendary 281 against Australia, he met Sehwag, still new to Test cricket, and Sehwag announced that he would soon score a triple hundred. Three years later he did. Simple, unhurried, uncluttered, between a chewing gum and a Bollywood song, he would race to a century, appalled at something called the art of defence. He took life gently and saved his ferocity for the incoming ball. Even his food habits, as Laxman explained, were simple. He was frugal and as folklore had it, the Nawab of Najafgarh got his energy from the enormous amount of milk he drank. There was something unflappable about him whether he scored 3 or 300. He changed the rules of the game, adapted technique to suit him. His uncluttered talent reminded one of a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, "about genius erring on the other side of simplicity". People like to recite his great scores, his triple hundreds, his 293. But I think number is only an accompaniment to the music of Sehwag.
READ ALSO
Virender Sehwag: Ten of his Test best
Statistics become a title. 293 or 311 is only a mnemonic to a memorable moment. A prelude announcing an epic knock. Sehwag could not be reduced to a bundle of techniques or management formula. He was a vernacular genius, confident of himself in the world of cosmopolitan cricket. Reputations did not bother him. It was as if he had the measure of them mentally. The game was won in his head. It was as if he played chess before and panja during the match. There was an animal-like ease to him, internally relaxed, outwardly ferocious. In this age of coaches, techniques, psychology, he was a man who eluded all explanation. There was nothing of the textbook about him. He wrote his own text. One can codify a Sachin or a Dravid, but Sehwag eludes formulae. He just is.
In fact, when you hear all the stories about him, you realize he escapes generalization. All one can say is, he was an enjoyable character who played to a different music. He was like butter chicken, lassi or a Bollywood song. An unquestioned touch of genius - elusive, accessible, commonsensical but with a mystique that makes him SEHWAG.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA