Arthur Rimbaud once wrote of youth, "You and your impatiences are only your dance and your voice, not fixed and not forced ..." Rimbaud's was a prodigious and startlingly original voice – while it lasted – and any youthful talent that bedazzles before flickering out invites the inevitable comparison. Virender Sehwag most likely hasn't heard of Rimbaud, but he could certainly relate to those lines after his innings today. His batting since he started opening in Tests has been a curious mixture of scintillating strokeplay and nervous moments spent battling temptation. When he retreats into defensive mode, you're reminded of a fire being stoked slowly and water simmering. The burst of flame and the whistle of steam are never too far away.

If cricket were a sport like ice-skating, Sehwag's effort today would have been marked very poorly for artistic impression. For every gorgeous cover-drive he played, there was an all-or-nothing flail over point, not to mention a clubbed stroke that fetched the ball from outside offstump and sent it through mid-on – the local butcher's impersonation of Joe DiMaggio's swing. But cricket isn't about tutus and triple axels, which is why a David Gower or a Kim Hughes will never enjoy the stature of a Bradman. Ultimately, the scores that you put on the board are everything, and in that respect, Sehwag is doing what no Indian opener has done with any consistency in the recent past.

While some of his improvisations are uneasy on the eye, there's no denying that they have bowlers contemplating desperate measures. In between playing and missing, he gets into position so quickly as to make a good-length delivery look like a gift-wrapped half-volley. The old martial cliché about attack being the best form of defence was made to look like gospel truth this afternoon, as India slashed free of the ties that bound in the first session.

Both Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar danced on the edge of the precipice and, though they fell, did enough to suggest that India should back their instincts against an English attack that they has been made to look far more formidable than it really is. Tendulkar lost his wicket to one of the worst balls you'll see all summer, but the very fact that he was prepared to play the pull instead of going into an uncharacteristic shell was a welcome sign. For all the reams of criticism in the papers tomorrow, it's worth remembering that nine times out of ten, he would have sent that ball into the crowd at deep midwicket.

Occupying the crease is one of the cardinal rules of Test cricket, but what price occupation that lacks dominance? Australia have swept aside all opposition with an approach that is never far from cavalier and it's worth remembering that England's sole victory in the Ashes last summer came courtesy of a buccaneering innings from Mark Butcher. As far as modern cricket goes, all talk of the meek and cautious inheriting the Earth is just so much bovine excreta.

Sehwag has miles to go before he can be compared with the likes of Barry Richards and Gordon Greenidge as an attacking opener. But he's young enough – and more importantly, talented enough - to suggest that such august company isn't beyond him. You can't argue with a Test hundred, no matter how patchy. Not when the alternative is an excruciatingly scratchy 20 or 30. The game needs batsmen like Sehwag and Gilchrist; otherwise the only people watching would be the old men in deckchairs. And they sleep through the whole thing anyway.

Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Wisden.com in India.

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