His Master's Clone

It's possible that God, under extreme pressure to produce a unique Indian over a billion times, slyly repeats a creation at least once. It was a rumour for months, but at the end of the Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka, the great scam was busted. Virender Sehwag, beneath the Indian helmet, looked so majestically similar to a man who's considered one and only that a happy sponsor now says: "Sehwag is Sachin Tendulkar at a 90 per cent discount." Despite the shrill objections of traditionalists, it's becoming increasingly probable that Tendulkar and Sehwag were made from the same soup.

But we may have never discovered the two. They were born many hundred miles and five years apart, without any trace of meaningful intellect or articulation that will make them famous enough to expose the grand sloth of the creator. One grew up in Mumbai to become the greatest consumer of vada pavs in western India, and the other an overweight Jat who drank four litres of milk everyday. But the original and the clone possessed a seemingly useless gift of sighting a small ball that travels at about 100 miles an hour a micro-second earlier than most of us. Thankfully limited in faculties that would have salvaged them through education, both have been compensated with a divine hand-eye, hand-hand, hand-leg coordination, aided by a lack of height theorists euphemistically call "low centre of gravity". They are also blessed with enough power to light up a stadium, making them the most destructive people ever to come out of a docile race that's never had the good sense to invade another country. They can also turn the ball more than Anil Kumble. Despite these disturbing similarities, when Latika Khaneja of the Collage Group wanted to make some money for Sehwag in June 2001, she compared him not with Tendulkar but with Kapil Dev.

Two hundred copies of her brave brochure tried to harp on how the two played the same Jat style "slam-bam" cricket. The sponsors then said: "Kapil? Don't go so far." They looked at Sehwag carefully and said: "He doesn't speak English, he is rash and immature." That disqualified him from saying on television that he drinks some diluted fruit juice with gas in it, or that he brushes his teeth every morning till they sparkle. That, again, is not very different from Sachin's nervous beginnings in the world of endorsements. One sponsor even said Sehwag "looks like a lump of lard. We cannot put him even on a calendar".

Before the Collage Group came along, player management company Sporting Frontiers promised Sehwag a minimum guaranteed amount of Rs 25 lakh a year. But the deal was not signed because, according to one of the men who was negotiating, Steve Waugh, who had a stake in the company, in what could be an uncharacteristically poor reading of a player, "felt the boy won't last long in the international circuit". But things began to change after Sehwag's Bloemfontein ton against South Africa. The first serious comparisons between him and Sachin started. Sehwag's own reaction, perhaps with some contrived humility, was: "How can you compare me with God?" Any good Hindu will tell him that if you try hard at the nets, you will realise God is in you.

Like many street cricketers, Sehwag was obsessed with Sachin. "I modelled myself on him. I used to watch every match and then its highlights on television. I used to look at his strokes and wonder if I could ever play them. Now I am in the same team as he. It's a dream that has come true". Points out sports physician Dr Kinjal Suratwala: "Sehwag watched Sachin at an impressionable age when his motor skills were developing. That accounts for an effective imitation of what he was very impressed with. But there were many short-statured boys who were as obsessed with Sachin but do not look like him when they bat.So we should not forget Sehwag's inherent talent that made him approach batting in a manner that he wanted to. Also, his temperament and humility are not things he could have borrowed from anybody, though they look similar to Sachin's."

It's difficult to understand what exactly humility means, but Sehwag's good friend and player management consultant, Sachin Bajaj, who played "social" cricket with both him and Tendulkar for the Cricket Club of India, says: "Both of them are so focused on the game that it doesn't let them think for a moment that they are bigger than the game or any of its players, no matter whatever the level." Sehwag's friends from the Under-19 days remember how he used to keep talking about the way Sachin conducted himself. Remembers India cap Sarandeep Singh: "He would not only discuss Sachin's shots, poise and reading of the wicket in great detail, but would also wonder when he is watching Sachin bat, 'what is he thinking'." Those were the days when he used to take a bus to the nets at Delhi's Kotla. Times have changed for Sehwag, who now endorses Hero Honda along with Samsung, Britannia, Boost and Colgate Palmolive. The minimum guarantee that the Collage Group gave him in June 2001 was Rs 1 crore for over a three-year period. But, says Sehwag's manager Latika Khaneja: "We crossed that figure a long time ago."

One crucial difference between Sachin and Sehwag, apart from the back lift, is that Sehwag has a good voice and he is not a Dire Straits fan. It's with Kishore Kumar that he bonds better. But he loves his new Honda City as much as Sachin loves his Mercedes. Tendulkar loves driving so much that he takes the wheel right from the airport. He sometimes slips out in the middle of the night for a peaceful drive on the empty lanes of Mumbai. Sehwag's initiation into all that's good about life is just beginning though we will always compare him with Sachin and add in parenthesis that he's not in the same class. But a growing number of people believe that Sehwag's more than a mere clone. They are heaping praises on him without mentioning Sachin in the same sentence. Like Tony Greig, who says: "Sehwag and Adam Gilchrist are the two players I like watching the most at the top of the order." Nasser Hussain adds: "We had our strategies against Sehwag. But none worked. Our bowlers tried the slower ball, bouncers and everything else. He hit even the good balls for fours." In many ways, Sehwag today reminds us of that 16-year-old boy who feared none, who went out there and hit some fully-grown men out of the reckoning. Then he grew up suddenly and 'assumed responsibility' towards the dependents. Sehwag may just bring that happy reckless lad back to life.

In a final comparison, it's almost painful to imagine what would have happened to both of them if there was no such thing called cricket. But perhaps, it's only fair to say that if there was no such thing called cricket, Jagmohan Dalmiya would have been just a builder, but the creation of Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag would have waited for some queer Englishmen to sow the clumsy beginnings of the most beautiful game in the world.