Quotes of the Day

When N.A. Sharma, a coach at a government-sponsored cricket center on the outskirts of the Indian capital of New Delhi, first met Virender Sehwag, he found little that impressed him. Sehwag was a 13-year-old local boy, son of a grain hawker, who lived in a house stuffed with siblings, uncles, aunts and 16 cousins. He had no dazzling skills—but was desperate to learn. Sharma was bowling to Sehwag one afternoon when dusk fell, and the coach suggested they call it a day. Sehwag refused: he wanted to perfect his stroke. "The other boys were sitting on the side gossiping," Sharma recalls, "but here was Sehwag, still batting. From that day onward, I told the other boys: 'Virender is going to play big cricket.'"

Cricket is India's national passion; Sehwag its latest object of hope and adoration. As a batsman, the 24-year-old is aggressive, graceful and, when he's on his game, outright dazzling. In a one-day match against New Zealand in 2001, he hit 100 runs off 69 balls—the second-fastest century by an Indian in history. The most striking feature of his batting is the ease with which he dispatches balls all around the wicket—the sign of a natural shotmaker. That talent is obvious to all Indians, including teammate and legend, Sachin Tendulkar, whom Sehwag idolizes and imitates.

To India's impoverished youth, Sehwag is the man of clay astride the mountain of the gods. Most of India's cricket heroes have come from affluent or middle-class backgrounds, gone to private schools and learned English and other gentlemanly ways. Sehwag was lucky his parents could afford the $3 a month for cricket training. His family didn't have high hopes: his grandmother used to call him bholi, an endearment for a good-natured simpleton. That simpleton is now a jet-setter. Invited into the cockpit of a jumbo jet on a recent flight from New Delhi to Bombay, Sehwag gazed at the gleaming dials and the skyline of Bombay coming into view and whispered: "If I wasn't a cricketer, I would never have been able to see this."

Between matches, Sehwag makes thousands of dollars a day shooting advertisements for multinational brands, including Coca-Cola, Samsung and Johnson & Johnson. The first sports jacket he ever donned was the blue blazer of the national cricket team. Today, Sehwag is a pitchman for Mayur Suitings, a giant textile manufacturer, and he owns a closet full of tailored suits. During a recent photo shoot in New Delhi for Mayur's catalogue Sehwag poses in two dozen outfits, and the photographer goes through a bagful of film, but the cricketer is ever cool, raising his eyes to the camera as if he's staring down a bowler on the pitch. "He's so sweet," coos the makeup artist.

Sehwag plans to trade in his Honda City for a red Mercedes convertible and buy his family a $500,000 home in New Delhi's posh Defence Colony. But he doesn't hide the apron strings endearingly attached to his cricketer's blazer. Sehwag calls his mother after every match, a habit memorialized in a cell-phone advertisement run on Indian television during the recent International Cricket Council's 2003 World Cup. He wears a gold Shiva medallion bought by her "for safety," he says, and his favorite dessert is still her homemade custard. Does his mother worry that her famous son will get caught up in the vacuous swirl of India's élite? "No," she says, sipping tea in her living room, a wall of Sehwag's trophies looming behind her. "He will marry a simple, homely girl who gives respect to his family."

Occasionally, Sehwag goes back to his old neighborhood of Najafgarh on the outskirts of New Delhi, distributes some pocket money to the local boys, instructs them in square cuts and backfoot punches, and lets them in on the key to his success. "I didn't have any connections," he lectures. "I just worked hard and played well. If you are talented, you will definitely get a chance."

On a recent afternoon in Najafgarh, school has let out, and on both sides of a dusty, pot-holed road, boys in gray slacks and frayed navy-blue sweaters are running past piles of discarded tires and skipping over spiny-haired pigs. They're playing cricket, of course, and for these prepubescents hoping to find a way out of hardscrabble lives, there is only one role model. "Sehwag played on this spot," says scrawny 12-year-old Deepak, tapping his bat on the uneven dirt wicket. "If Virender Sehwag can make it from here," he says, "so can I."

• Brian Bennett
• A man and his bat carry the hopes of a nation