Playing on a different pitch

This has been a Test match of two pitches - one for Virender Sehwag, and one for everybody else. While his less-cavalier team-mates and opponents played with excessive caution and a distinct lack of initiative, Sehwag blazed away with the insouciance that has come to be his calling-card. While the watch-and-wait set eked out 747 runs from 1600 balls, Sehwag's thrilling 164 occupied just 228 deliveries, with 56 coming from only 35 balls after lunch.

After withstanding probing spells from Makhaya Ntini and Shaun Pollock in the morning, Sehwag teed off with élan once the second-stringers came on. Three overs from Andrew Hall, Zander de Bruyn and Robin Peterson disappeared for 46, as shots started to streak past the fielders - and over them. And like Sachin Tendulkar in his pomp - who can forget that 114 at the WACA in 1992 in a match where India were eviscerated? - the match situation didn't faze him one bit.

With the afternoon blitz, he also became the seventh batsman past 1000 runs in the calendar year, though his 1020 runs at 72.85 against top-notch bowling - he has only played Australia and Pakistan - puts him a country mile ahead of his rivals, some of whom have filled their boots against the likes of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, in the quality stakes.

It's the 13th time that an Indian has surpassed the 1000-barrier, with Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar both doing it four times. And Sehwag now has three more Tests - one against South Africa and two against hapless Bangladesh - to overhaul Sunil Gavaskar's Indian record of 1555 runs, set in 1979, a year immortalised in song by the Smashing Pumpkins. Sir Vivian Richards's tally of 1710 appears to be safe, though you can never take anything for granted when Sehwag is in the mood.

But while Sehwag will justifiably take the plaudits, due credit must go to Gautam Gambhir, who kept pace with him for all but the last half-hour, when nerves induced by the nearness of a century paralysed his hitherto dashing strokeplay. There was also an interesting little cameo from Sourav Ganguly, who remains the favourite whipping boy of the Indian media despite averaging 50.16 over the past nine Tests he has played.

It won't stop the conspiracy theories or the innuendoes about likely prospects being kept out because of the captain's insecurity, but it should remind the men that matter that Ganguly - for all his flaws, and every batsman has them - still has plenty to offer with the bat alone. If nothing else, he still times the ball with a sweetness that others can only envy: the shot to the long-on fence that raised his fifty was little more than a defensive tap, and there was one scorching square-drive off Pollock which was as gorgeous as anything he ever produced in his heyday.

Interminable time, rather than timing, characterised Rahul Dravid's effort, as he chiselled out perhaps the ugliest half-century of a career epitomised by laid-back elegance. It's a mark of the man's bloody-mindedness, and refusal to be enslaved by the vagaries of form, that he's still there after four hours of playing, missing, edging, prodding and strokes of luck.

South Africa certainly won't whine about Dame Fortune, though. Simon Taufel's decision to give Sehwag out off a borderline call allowed them to regroup after a manic post-lunch phase when the dark and murky sky above appeared to the only limit for a shotmaker who is currently superior to every other when it comes to consistency and entertainment value.