Some good excerpts
And then there were the Indians, for whom Virender Sehwag - more so even than the man of the moment, Yuvraj Singh - is a totemic influence. As Stuart MacGill once put it, after Sehwag had butchered 195 from 233 balls in the 2003 Melbourne Test, "It's not that he can't pick my bowling, it's just he doesn't care." Sehwag's last 11 Test centuries, dating back to that innings, have been gargantuan affairs: 195, 309, 155, 164, 173, 201, 254, 180, 151, 319, 201 not out, all scored at - or bloody close to - a run a ball. He deserves a place in history as the first truly postmodern cricketer, a player who has taken one tempo and extrapolated it to fit whatever length of contest is required.All of the above might have been a coincidence, but somehow I doubt it, because that would mean a belittling of the unsung star of India's show. Zaheer Khan taught England a lesson in their own conditions last year - Ryan Sidebottom admitted he'd never contemplated going around the wicket as a left-arm seamer until he saw the success achieved by his opposite number. On Sunday, Zaheer followed up with a home-school lesson.
His five overs, all bowled during the Powerplays, went for a miserly 20 runs, and included the key wickets of Shah and Patel. When he wasn't doing the job himself, he was coaching his younger colleagues - Dhoni even left him to set the fields when the match reached its midnight tipping point. Bell and Bopara jabbed back
his new-ball offerings as if Glenn McGrath had been spirited onto the stage, but half-an-hour later he returned as Darren Gough, swinging yorker after yorker into the blockhole to deny England any opportunity to take the aerial route.
Good ha !
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