He sent shivers in the spines of even mighty bowlers of the likes of Shoaib Akhtar, Muralidharan, Bret Lee etc. He always rose to the occasion against our arch-enemy Pakistan. His scintillating drives made the balls reach boundary lines before you could bat your eyelids. He brought life into the otherwise boring test matches. Yes, I am talking about none other than the Nawab of Najafgarh, the Sultan of Multan, one and only the swashbuckling Sehwag. He has recently announced his retirement from the international cricket and the IPL. So, it's time to evaluate him.
The statistics says everything. Only Indian to have 2 triple hundreds, 3 highest scores in the history of Indian test history, fastest three hundred ever, test strike rate of 82.2 top among players with 2000 plus runs: what else do you require to brand him as the best Indian test batsman ever? Test average of 49.34 with that kind of strike rate is simply amazing!
He was not the guy who played for personal records. He was a match winner, a great entertainer, who did not hesitate to go for a six even at the score of 94 in a test match. That's why his number of test hundreds did not go beyond 23. In the modern day test matches it is not only necessary to score runs, but also to score them quickly. Virender Sehwag exactly did that.
In the odi format, his average of 35.05 looks excellent when you combine that with the strike rate of 104.33 (second highest after Shahid Afridi among the odi batsmen who scored more than 2000 runs). India won 14 of the 15 odis where he scored centuries. Isn't that astonishing?
Some critics point fingers at his unorthodox techniques. It's true that the best weapon in his armourery was his hand-eye coordination. Great footwork was not his forte. However, I will prefer Sehwag rather than those technically solid players who will play for personal records.
It's indeed unfortunate that he didn't get any chance to play for India after March 2013. This simple guy didn't know the tricks to remain relevant. So, he was denied chance to entertain the crowd in the last 2 years in international cricket. It's really unfortunate that he had to retire in such unceremonious manner which didn't match with his glorious career.
In my opinion he is the best Indian cricketer so far. If I am to rate top 5 Indian cricketers I have seen, my rating would be 1. Sehwag 2. Kapil Deb 3. Sachin Tendulkar 4. Sourav Ganguly 5. Anil Kumble
Pictures are taken from net. He sent shivers in the spines of even mighty bowlers of the likes of Shoaib Akhtar, Muralidharan, Bret Lee etc. He always rose to the occasion against our arch-enemy Pakistan. His scintillating drives made the balls reach boundary lines before you could bat your eyelids. He brought life into the otherwise boring test matches. Yes, I am talking about none other than the Nawab of Najafgarh, the Sultan of Multan, one and only the swashbuckling Sehwag. He has recently announced his retirement from the international cricket and the IPL. So, it's time to evaluate him.
The statistics says everything. Only Indian to have 2 triple hundreds, 3 highest scores in the history of Indian test history, fastest three hundred ever, test strike rate of 82.2 top among players with 2000 plus runs: what else do you require to brand him as the best Indian test batsman ever? Test average of 49.34 with that kind of strike rate is simply amazing!
He was not the guy who played for personal records. He was a match winner, a great entertainer, who did not hesitate to go for a six even at the score of 94 in a test match. That's why his number of test hundreds did not go beyond 23. In the modern day test matches it is not only necessary to score runs, but also to score them quickly. Virender Sehwag exactly did that.
In the odi format, his average of 35.05 looks excellent when you combine that with the strike rate of 104.33 (second highest after Shahid Afridi among the odi batsmen who scored more than 2000 runs). India won 14 of the 15 odis where he scored centuries. Isn't that astonishing?
Some critics point fingers at his unorthodox techniques. It's true that the best weapon in his armourery was his hand-eye coordination. Great footwork was not his forte. However, I will prefer Sehwag rather than those technically solid players who will play for personal records.
It's indeed unfortunate that he didn't get any chance to play for India after March 2013. This simple guy didn't know the tricks to remain relevant. So, he was denied chance to entertain the crowd in the last 2 years in international cricket. It's really unfortunate that he had to retire in such unceremonious manner which didn't match with his glorious career.
In my opinion he is the best Indian cricketer so far. If I am to rate top 5 Indian cricketers I have seen, my rating would be 1. Sehwag 2. Kapil Deb 3. Sachin Tendulkar 4. Sourav Ganguly 5. Anil Kumble
Pictures are taken from net.
