'I'm very happy I scored at least 293 runs.' © AFP Enlarge
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He spent all of Thursday evening replying to messages. The act of punching the mobile keypad possibly left him more tired than the six hours of mayhem he unleashed yesterday that had put him 16 runs short of becoming the first man to hit three triple centuries. And so it appeared this morning when, despite a sound night's sleep, he made an error of judgement to fall short of the landmark by seven runs.

His fans at the Brabourne Stadium - thousands of them, some rushing in from neighbouring Gujarat - were visibly disappointed, but not so their hero. "It is a missed opportunity," Virender Sehwag agreed, yet remained upbeat. "I'm very happy I scored at least 293 runs. The fact that I could still score 290 after two three triple centuries … I'm proud of myself and extremely happy."

Any other man would have left the stage upset and angry, possibly hitting pad with bat in disgust (as did Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Yuvraj Singh today) but Sehwag, after just a moment of very visible anguish, sauntered back to the dressing chest out, smiling as he acknowledged the applause from the stands.

Later, he revealed the story behind his big innings, which is bad news for bowlers the world over. No more, it seems, is he interested in merely playing smackdown with bowlers: he wants to exercise restraint for at least the first hour and that, says his coach Gary Kirsten, can reap him rich dividends.

Kirsten and Sehwag had a chat during the first Test in Ahmedabad, and the coach asked him to spend more time on the pitch before going for his shots. "He [Kirsten] said that if I survived the new ball for the first 10 overs I cannot imagine how quickly I can get to big hundreds," Sehwag said. So, yesterday, Sehwag spent the first 40-odd minutes warming up. "I played a lot of dot balls and showed a lot of patience." (He was right: he played 129 dot balls in his 254-ball innings). At the eighth over he'd hit only one four and had scored 15 off 31 balls. His eventual strike rate of 115 was virtually double the combined strike rate of his partners (60.5).

The pattern was established in Kanpur. He scored 131, but the first boundary arrived in the twelfth over, by when he'd already faced 26 balls for six runs. At that point Gautam Gambhir, his opening partner, was on 24. But Sehwag eventually reached his half-century a ball before Gambhir reached his.

And to those who still believe Sehwag doesn't think too much about his game, he revealed that he does - in fact, he plays mind games with the bowlers, saying the best way to distract a bowler is to take him by surprise. So even if he never practises certain shots like the reverse sweep or the reverse paddle that he played on Thursday he said he was confident he could implement them whenever he wanted to. "I played those shots because I didn't want the bowler to settle down. I wanted to force him to ask questions of himself," Sehwag said.

Sehwag understands that his Bolt-like powers of acceleration can give India a chance to boss the game. "I always tell myself to bat the full day and if there is a ball to be hit just hit because, if I'm able to bat the full day, we will be in a good position." It happened in Kanpur, where India scored 400 on the first day and immediately put Sri Lanka under pressure. In Mumbai, too, India are once again poised to record their second straight innings victory against Sri Lanka.

The Sehwag effect can get contagious, too, as four Indians got half centuries and Dhoni even managed a magnificent hundered lower down the order. "It was one of the best hundreds by a wicketkeeper-batsman in the lower order. He defended well and then hit the big shots," Sehwag said of his captain's innings.

With 180 overs still to be bowled Sehwag said "a good team" like the Sri Lankans can easily put up a fight on a pitch that still has everything for both batsmen and bowlers. "At the same time we also would need to be patient especially the way MS Dhoni and Pragyan Ojha batted in the end with a good partnership."