Friday, January 7, 2011

Virendra Sehwag is a Liability



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In Virendra Sehwag, India have a trend setting opener. Wonderfully committed to his style of play.

Clean, uncluttered and delightfully simple. Both in attack and those rare times when he defends for substantial periods of time.

In a team that has champion batsmen in the middle, it is Sehwag's presence that makes India the most formidable batting line up in the world. The kind of line up that allows India to set up wins, go for wins and avoid defeats. And in the last few years they have handled all situations.

By all standards Virendra Sehwag had a disappointing tour of South Africa. That is certainly true at an individual level. But that is not the whole story of Virendra Sehwag's role in the series.

As I search for answers as to why Greame Smith did not push for a win by setting India a reasonable chase on the 4th day, I can only guess...

It was the fear of Virendra Sehwag.

In that sense India's resurgence as a formidable chaser of 4th innings targets and the presence of Virendra Sehwag means that it will always have to be the bowlers who would have to win games for India in the 3rd innings.

Team's aren't going to be interested in going for wins against a batting line up that has Virendra Sehwag.

In that sense he is a liability.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

Hah, smartly misleading title. I was readily armed with abuse :P

Ganesh said...

Sehwag batted like Afridi and Dravid batted like Akash Chopra in this series.

Tees Maar Khan said...

Will thise series mark the end of Rahul Dravid as we know him? There are so many promising batsment waiting in the ranks. Dravid has been an invaluable asset to India's Test batting so far... butr going forward, I'm not so sure. Being a flop in 3 consecutive tests... that sucks !!!

Freehit said...

The reason why I love blogging is that I come across different people with different views and they are fantastic to read on.

This is one such intelligent blogger who looks at things in a totally unique way.

@Tess Maar Khan-Rahul Dravid consistently got starts and looked good before getting out to some fantastic bowling. So his career is far from over. In fact, going by the way he resigned from captaincy, he will retire the right time and he knows it better than us. So, stop judging the legend.

Vidooshak said...

Well, liability is a strong term to use. Without Sehwag, teams would not have feared India's batting. I don't believe Smith would have set an achievable target without Sehwag either. The real story here is that SA gave up after figuring out in Durban that bouncy wickets worked against them and that the Centurion first innings roll-over by India was a fluke.

Unknown said...

Yeah, Vidooshak. I was going over the stats for my series review, and what annoyed me is how much that first innings changes the whole thing. Take it away, and things are very even. For instance, ABdV screwed us at Centurion when the going was good but was rubbish when put under pressure himself for the rest of the series.

Golandaaz said...

Rishab : :-)

Ganesh: That's a nice one. I wish AC stopped writing.

TMK : There is no one more aware of what the right thing to do about RD's career than RD himself. He was at his best in Australia 2003. It was also the time he was thinking strokes and not just defense. I think he needs to get back to that. RD SRT and VVS have kept themselves wonderfully fit and learnt to play through their injuries. I hope they play for a bt longer. I am more or less with Freehit on this one

Freehit: Thanks for the compliments!

Vidooshak : Of course the title is meant to be misleading and hence unjustifiably strong. Only meant to drive a point. As to whether its true, I am only haarding a guess

Anonymous said...

"Hah, smartly misleading title. I was readily armed with abuse :P"
--I second this comment...

Richard T said...

A really interesting article. I am also a cricket fanatic with a blog on here.

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Golandaaz said...

chelsea101, done

Ganesh said...

Surprised that you're following my blog too!If you have time,respond to my posts.:D