Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Boeta Dippenaar spoke to the media on a variety of issues after the fourth day’s play at Kanpur
Wisden Cricinfo staff22-Jul-2009
Virender Sehwag celebrates his Kanpur century© Getty Images
Virender Sehwag
On missing out on a possible double-hundred
I was still far away from a double-century, but at least I didn’t throw my wicket away this time.On opening with Gautam Gambhir
I had never opened with Gambhir in a Test till the Mumbai game against Australia. If we had settled in similar fashion over there we could have piled up a good score and it would have augured well. But it was nice to watch the way Gautam hardly showed any sign of pressure after his first-Test flop, because instead of playing steadily to fight his nerves he played a wonderful innings – half the time he was ahead of me.On the pace of India’s innings so far
We had decided in the morning to not lose any wickets, and that’s the reason we played slowly in the morning. After lunch we decided to quicken the pace so that we could get a big total by lunch tomorrow, and then try and bundle them out on a final-day pitch against the likes of [Anil] Kumble, Harbhajan [Singh] and [Murali] Kartik. That will still be our plan for tomorrow.On the difference between this opening partnership and other recent ones
The positive factor was we were playing our shots, but the last four Tests were played against a world-champion team and hence the pressure was more, and even though the other openers tried their best, unfortunately, they failed. Here, the pitch is dead and completely batsman-friendly.On whether switching partners around affects his batting
Not at all. The partner doesn’t make a difference to my batting. Yes, if the partner stays there, we feed on each other’s confidence, and the team gets a better start.On how the batting slowed down after he was out
Obviously after the fall of a wicket it is not easy to bat on a wicket that is keeping low and the ball is taking reverse swing. But once Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid settled down they played their shots.On the pitch
You have to make a better wicket where the bowler also gets some purchase, where the ball carries and takes turn. These kind of wickets are not beneficial to cricket.On doing well in Tests but less well in ODIs
In the one-dayers it is difficult to strike form quickly, as there is very little time – [you have] to play your strokes continuously. However in a Test you have lot of time and you can spend longer to get back to form.On whether South Africa were adopting a negative line
Of course, they had a negative approach right from the start whereas they had made a statement at the beginning of the game about a result. Instead, I never felt they had a winning attitude – they wanted to stop us from scoring by setting defensive fields and negative bowling. But we decided to be positive and go for a result.On the fog restricting India’s march
Yes, we only got only 112 overs in two days while they faced 183 overs. If we had played close to 150 overs we could have scored more than 500.Gautam Gambhir
On his positive batting
All the seniors helped me and gave me confidence. The good thing was that in front of me Viru bhai was playing, so that made me more positive.On missing a maiden Test hundred
Obviously it was a disappointment to miss the hundred. I was conscious of the nerves in the nineties, and I tried to calm myself down.Boeta Dippenaar
On the day’s play
It was a mixed bag for us. Virender Sehwag played really well and put us under a lot of pressure, but we came back really well which was a positive for us. It was very evenly poised, in that the Indians would have felt they had a good day as well. And in terms of where were stood at the start of the day, when their two openers were playing really well, we came back to put a lot of pressure on them in the middle session, and we were rewarded in that phase.On the Indians feeling that South Africa’s approach was negative
They can feel that, but you have to look at the conditions and there wasn’t much else that we could do. The wicket wasn’t really conducive for us to do much else, so we had to play the frustrating game. They might not like it, but we’ve got to do what believe is the best thing, and we thought that was the best thing to do today.On the likely result
It might on the surface look like the game is heading for a dead rubber, but there is a lot to play for, although a result would be an unlikely option. A lot of momentum that will be generated tomorrow will be taken to the next Test, and this is key.On the positives from the match so far
From a batting point of view it was really nice to see our batters do well against world-class spinners. From the bowler’s angle we know there is a lot of hard work still to be done. And though we were under a lot of pressure we came back really well to build pressure on the opposition, especially in the middle session. The fighting spirit the guys showed out there was very good.On bowling to Sehwag
He put our bowlers under a serious amount of pressure. Cricket is all about momentum, he built that momentum and took the momentum with him. And then it is really difficult to stop a guy like that. So I wouldn’t be too critical about our bowlers, as he took the attack to us and he was a hard guy to stop.
