How coach AN Sharma ‘fine-tuned’ Sehwag

‘I asked him to play more square and less fine’

It was the time when Virender Sehwag, after falling out of favour with the national team, was not getting his touch back even in Ranji Trophy games. During one of his usual trip to coach AN Sharma’s net session, Sehwag became philosophical.

In a heart-to-heart talk, Sharma told Sehwag that he was feeling quite bad with him not being in the national squad. To that Sehwag replied: “Sir agar takdeer mein hoga toh phir main zaroor kheloonga. (If its in my destiny that I have to play again then I will).”

Sharma says that generally it’s the coach’s duty to give confidence to a player but it was other way round with Sehwag. “He used to console me saying that I shouldn’t feel bad that he wasn’t a part of the team and that things would be fine,” recalls Sharma.

Story continues below this ad

With Sehwag re-discovering himself in Australia, Sharma speaks about the time the two spent working on the star opener’s weakness. “Viru is a stroke maker. He loves to bat on pitches where the ball comes on to the bat. Earlier he used to flash the ball over the slips and got out like that on numerous occasions. There was also talk that he doesn’t play on his front foot. So during this whole one year when he was not a part of the team we worked on that. Whenever he came for nets to me I used to tell him that he should play square of wicket rather than playing fine. I used to tell him to bat for 60-70 minutes and used to place 14 players on the field, telling him he shouldn’t get out. Also, I asked the bowlers to make him play on the front foot. And that paid off. In this series he concentrated more and played sensible cricket,” Sharma says.

Sehwag’s teammate and now the coach of Delhi Ranji team Vijay Dahiya too agrees that there were a lot of changes in the 30-year-old opener. “Sehwag had been out of form for quite some time now and this has really helped him. The break was useful as it gave him the time to think and as a result he has returned with a bang. Earlier he used to just go out and hit every ball that came his way but in this series we saw that he played with more maturity. He has understood the importance of staying at the wicket and performing consistently,” Dahiya said.