Viru's knock was unbelievable: Dravid

Rahul Dravid tells Mid DAY what's it like to bat with Sehwag

Rahul Dravid tells Mid DAY what's it like to bat with Sehwag

Virender Sehwag hits out during his double century in the recently concluded Mumbai Test. PIC/AFP

Twice during Virender Sehwag's top three Test knocks, a rock-solid Rahul Dravid has been a silent admirer at the other end.

Dravid was shaking his head in appreciation and amazement when Sehwag raced to 319 off 304 balls against South Africa in Chennai last year. And when Sehwag fell short by just seven runs to become the first batsman ever to score three Test triple hundreds on Friday, it was again Dravid, who enjoyed his heroics from the most envious position.

Dravid, often overshadowed by the man at the other end during his prolific career, termed Sehwag's 293 as a special knock.u00a0

Pace and spin
"In Chennai, you had a very strong pace bowling attack in South Africa. And here, the Sri Lankans had a couple of very good spinners. That was probably the main difference in terms of the attack," Dravid told
MiD DAY when asked to compare the two knocks. "But in terms of stroke-making, destructiveness and domination of the bowling attack, it's very hard to differentiate between the two. Both of them were really special knocks."

Dravid, however, felt the peculiarity of last week's knock lay in Sehwag's execution of high-risk strokes against Muttiah Muralitharan and Co.

"Once he gets on a roll and once he starts hitting the ball, his ability to execute shots that would otherwise be very risky is incredible. You think of certain shots that he executed u2013 they were traditionally very risky or the percentage of you pulling them off is not very high u2014 he just pulled them off. When you are ready to do that, it's very difficult to set the fields," said Dravid, who scored 74 in India's record total of 726 for nine declared at the Brabourne.

Such was Sehwag's form that day that one felt it wasn't Kumar Sangakkara, the Lankan skipper, who was setting the field for Sehwag but the other way around. Even Dravid felt the same way at times. "It was impossible to set the field for him. You set a field back, he gets it over the field; you bring the field up, he will get it past you. At some stage, I almost felt he was toying with the bowling," Dravid said. "You can do that for a short course of time, but to do that over a course of a day at almost the same tempo, that too hardly making a mistake, was really phenomenal."

Sheer quality
Dravid, being an ardent student of the game, concluded by pointing out watching such knocks from so close helps him learn a lot. "I've been part of a very good batting line-up to have played with quality of a Sehwag, Gambhir, Tendulkar, Laxman, Yuvraj, Dhoni, and others. You've got to stand at the other end and witness a special innings time and again," Dravid said. "Sometimes, it's not just the best position to enjoy some exceptional batting, but also to learn a lot from it. Sometimes these guys play such knocks that it's almost impossible to believe what you have witnessed."