I?m quite desperate for runs: Sehwag

"Sourav told me that all I need to do is spend some time in the middle and get the feel of being out there back," said Sehwag.

His face is expressionless, absolutely deadpan as he enters the room and looks around. There is no hurry in his stride, no little gesture that so often betrays someone's nervousness or worry. Despite what must be his leanest patch in a long, long time, with scores of 0, 37, 16, 1, 81, 5, 17, 4, 0 and 1 this season, Virender Sehwag looks remarkably insouciant as he accepts the buzz of people that swarm him as his due.

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He smiles one of his rare smiles with disarming candour as he shrugs an apology at someone, turns to face a waiting TV camera and then returns for a chat. The process is repeated every now and then as he makes his way around the room, till he finally settles down to sign the pile of small bats that await the Indian team's signatures. "You can keep talking," he says. "No problem."

The wooden expression though, is not a sign of what's inside the man's head. Sehwag is as worried as he can be. "I'm quite desperate for runs," he says casually, signing and then picking up the next bat with practised ease. "Not so much for myself, I have never really thought too much about what my scores are, given the way I play. But it makes it very tough for the team if I keep failing at the top. It puts that much more pressure on the batsmen to follow and everything follows from what happens at the top."