If after the legendary Sunil Gavaskar, any Indian batter ranks among the best Test openers in the world, that is Virender Sehwag. For someone tipped to be only a one-day success, Sehwag broke all barriers of conventional batting, so much so that he would end up with superior batting records in Tests as compared to ODIs and T20Is. Sehwag wasn’t known much for his foot movement, but when you score over 10,000 runs with two triple-centuries and six double hundreds, who is to mind?
Since Sehwag’s retirement, India have tried multiple opening options – from Shikhar Dhawan to KL Rahul and now Rohit Sharma… but none could replicate that level of success. In fact, after the Sehwag-Gautam Gambhir opening pair, India are still looking for a formidable and bankable opening duo in Tests. The one pair that came close was that of Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay. Between 2013 and 2018, Vijay and Dhawan scored over 1500 runs opening together in Tests adding two century and five half-century partnerships with a best of 289. However, both their India Test careers ended in 2018 but between the two, Vijay had the good fortune to open with Sehwag. Vijay, 38, who is out of reckoning for an India return, revealed what was batting with Sehwag like and mentioned that had it received the kind of backing Viru did, his career could have panned out differently.
“Consciously, I didn’t get the freedom of Virender Sehwag to be honest. Whatever Sehwag got in his life, I didn’t. If I could have got that kind of backing and open-spreaded talks, I could have also tried. The honest thing is the team’s backing and how you can contribute to the team in international level. It’s a high-level competition and you don’t have many chances to experiment different ways,” Vijay said on the Wednesday with WV Raman for Sportstar.
“You’ve got to be consistent so you’ve got to have everything as a package and how you’re going to mould yourself to the team’s demand. When Sehwag was there, I felt controlling my instincts and playing was hard but to see him go through that kind of freedom was something spectacular.”
Having said that, Vijay admits he was in absolute awe of Sehwag and the way he went about his batting. Not many have witnessed the capability of Sehwag damaging the opposition from the other end quite like his opening partners. And if barring Sachin Tendulkar and Gambhir, anyone else has seen Sehwag inflict carnage, it was Vijay with the best seat in the house.
“Only he could have done that. Nobody else I feel could have played like Sehwag. What he did for Indian cricket was amazing. Different… he is something else which I have seen visually. I had the privilege to interact with him. It was so simple. He kept his mantra so simple – See the ball and hit. He was in that mode; singing songs to 145-150 kph bowlers. You are experiencing something else. It’s not normal,” mentioned Vijay.
