'I am a middle-order batsman' - Sehwag speaks out

Virender Sehwag, Adidas-apparelled from head to toe, arrived at the mid-morning press conference wearing a serious expression on his face. The painful sciatic nerve that cut short his Leicestershire stint was being treated by Andrew Leipus, and Sehwag assured everyone that he would be fit and ready to go by the time New Zealand arrived in India.

Those that expected a mundane briefing were jolted out of their complacency when the subject of opening the batting came up. "I am a middle-order batsman," he said with a poker-faced expression, "and that's where I'd like to bat in Test matches."

When pressed further, he said, "I don't wish to upset the team combination right now, but I have given thought to batting in the middle-order. The team needs good openers who can see off the new ball. The aim early on is to survive, and not score quick runs." The fact that India are touring Australia - Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee are likely to share the new ball - later this year obviously had nothing to do with this new line of thought.

Sehwag said his experience of county cricket was very positive. "I had a problem early on in the summer with the seaming wickets," he admitted with characteristic candour. "But once the pitches got better, I enjoyed myself."

Asked to place the county experience in perspective, he said, "It's not really much different from our first-class cricket, but the press there gives it a lot of importance. And when you're the overseas professional, like I was, there is some pressure on you to do well."

He was also very supportive in his analysis of what has gone wrong for Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif, at Yorkshire and Derbyshire respectively. "The wickets they play on are not great. They tend to be damp, and the bounce can also be uneven. You might have seen that yesterday when England played South Africa at Trent Bridge."

He found the biff-bang-wallop format of 20:20 cricket "very exciting and batsman-oriented", and reckoned it would be a huge success if adopted in India. And he left the room only after assuring everyone that - despite all talk of survival being key at the top of the order - the inherently aggressive nature of his strokeplay hadn't changed.

Outside, the other probables soaked up the wonderful weather - blue sky, temperature in the mid 20s [Celsius] and a gentle breeze. They came in batches for the workout, which consisted mainly of runs up and down the stands in the empty hulk of the stadium. Of those that came and went, Zaheer Khan looked in the best shape. With the increased stress on fitness and strength training over the past year, his lithe physique has increasingly begun to resemble that of the man who was the last word in left-arm pace bowling. If he turns out to be even half the bowler that Wasim Akram was, Indian cricket will have been well served.