Feel sad to say good-bye to a Legendary Opening pair

[maniac]

Gambhir is a very good player but yes Sehwag is an ATG,not an Indian ATG but an actual ATG....please don't even put Gambhir in the same sentence and Sehwag....Having said that yes Gambhir quallifies as an Indian legend.

[India-KXIP fan]

Gambhir is a very good player but yes Sehwag is an ATG' date='not an Indian ATG but an actual ATG....please don't even put Gambhir in the same sentence and Sehwag....Having said that yes Gambhir quallifies as an Indian legend.[/quote'] Disagree both are Indian greats and that's that. Viru was an ATG until he ruined his legacy with the 3 tours in SA, Eng and Aus. Now his numbers are way too poor to be ATG status. You can't just not include the last few tours and overall numbers.

[adi B]

whoa,hold on,gambhir an indian great? no he is not.he is a good test batsman,thats all.viru is an ATG no doubt

[moniker]

There was a time when all of the top 6 batsmen averaged 50+.:(

[aceofbase]

Sehwag is definetly an all time great..He is the one who made test cricket batting enjoyable and changed the way it is played..He occupies a unique place not only in Indian batting but also in world cricket...that is undisputable.... On the other hand , with due respect to gambhir, he is just one of those good batsman who played for India..Nothing extraordinary or spectacular about him..

[Precambrian]

Sehwag is definetly an all time great..He is the one who made test cricket batting enjoyable and changed the way it is played..He occupies a unique place not only in Indian batting but also in world cricket...that is undisputable.... On the other hand , with due respect to gambhir, he is just one of those good batsman who played for India..Nothing extraordinary or spectacular about him..

Can argue Sehwag was preceded by Jayasurya - as test batsman.

[aceofbase]

Can argue Sehwag was preceded by Jayasurya - as test batsman.

i dont buy that...I cant recall any jayasuriya special test innings like sehwag's...

[Precambrian]

i dont buy that...I cant recall any jayasuriya special test innings like sehwag's...

There are many. The 213 against Eng at oval in the Murali test comes to mind Between 96 and 04, Jaya avged 45 as aan opener and used to score at a fairly good rate.

[Crookbond]

i dont buy that...I cant recall any jayasuriya special test innings like sehwag's...

There are many Jayasuriya special Test innings. I think the best was 131 vs Australia 2nd innings in Kandy. SL lost by 27 runs but chasing 352 they really gave Australia a scare. The next highest score for SL in the 2n innings was 45 by Vaas. All said, Jayasuirya is not a great a Test match player. The simple reason being only 2 out of his 14 hundred were outside SC. In ODI cricket, Jayasuriya influenced the way batsmen started an ODI innings. I wouldn't say he changed it because there were already people like Greatbatch who tried to pinch hit in the first 15 overs. Jayasuriya took it to another level and showed that matches could be heavily influenced with such a strategy.

[aceofbase]

There are many. The 213 against Eng at oval in the Murali test comes to mind Between 96 and 04, Jaya avged 45 as aan opener and used to score at a fairly good rate.

This is from Wisden: Virender Sehwag had to beat off the strongest of challenges by Graeme Smith to become the Leading Cricketer in the World for 2008. Sehwag did so by taking the task of opening Test innings to a new level. He sought, and often achieved, mental domination from the first ball by scoring faster than any other opening batsman has ever done on a regular basis in Test cricket: 85 runs per 100 balls in the calendar year, without any soft opponents (Smith made 488 of his Test runs against Bangladesh); Sehwag also scored at 120 per 100 balls in one-day internationals. He hit the fastest Test triple-century ever, from only 278 balls, against South Africa. Sehwag and India softened up Australia by defeating them 2-0 in India, for Smith and South Africa to beat them in Australia. Sehwag broke a mould as well as records: he set up the highest successful run-chase in Asia, and the fourth-highest to that point, by striking England's bowlers for 83 from 68 balls at Chennai. Smith was following Sehwag's suit when, a week later, he scored 108 in his second innings at Perth to set up the highest successful run-chase in Australia, and the second-highest ever. It would be such a shame if Virender Sehwag needed to be buttressed with figures, hugely impressive as they are. They don't convey an iota of what the stocky figure of this Delhi dasher implies at the crease for bowlers. Fours and sixes come off his bat in rapid-fire succession, as if from a machine gun, and bowlers are out of their wits before long. A certain numbness overtakes them as they run up to bowl. And then there is mayhem. Any coach of a rival team is at risk of slipping down in the eyes of his wards as soon as he floats a plan to curb Sehwag. In eight years and 66 Tests, there have been plans aplenty. Bowl him short-pitched deliveries - he doesn't have an on-side stroke except the thrust off his pads, and his straight drives aren't his strongest point. Don't give him room on his off stump, and tuck him up with big inswingers, are other suggestions. Yet nothing works. Sehwag somehow always creates room to free his arms. The overwhelming impression is that he wants every delivery to yield him a four or six. Yet it would be folly to view Sehwag as no more than a rampaging bull in a cricketing arena. He is a masterful judge of a single, and it doesn't matter if the ball goes no more than a few feet away. He gets off the block quickly and has the confidence to take on the world's best. He isn't just a threat to those patrolling the boundaries; he is as much a menace to those who are marking the square. The opening pair of Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir are as exasperating with their running between wickets as with their inventive strokeplay. Reputations don't matter to this most amazing of all modern cricketers, whose way of thinking is unlike any I have seen. He made a return to Test cricket in Perth at the start of 2008 and, despite being a borderline selection for the Australian tour and having been in hibernation for the best part of a year, he was as nonchalant as ever. Australia had packed their attack with four genuine fast bowlers on a track billed to be the WACA at its liveliest. No less a factor was the scorching hot and humid conditions. Sehwag's response? "Well, heat is welcome. It would mean the bowlers won't have long spells." His mind is always working overtime on how to make bowlers lose their bearings. It was the same when, after almost two days in the field in the humidity of Chennai, he squared up to Dale Steyn, arguably the bowler of the year, and scored 319 off only 304 balls, judged by the ICC rankings as among the top ten Test innings of all time. Off his own bat Sehwag scored 257 runs on the third day, the most in modern times, against a high-class fielding side. Or when he smashed that double-hundred against Muttiah Muralitharan and freakish Ajantha Mendis, tipped to be the one who would redefine the art of spinning in years to come, and carried his bat for 201 out of India's total of 329 at Galle in July. Sehwag is no mean off-spinner either, and has a five-for against Australia to prove it. Ego doesn't have any part in his mental make-up, and he rejoices as much in the success of a young mate as he applauds the milestones of a master like Sachin Tendulkar. He isn't the kind to hold grudges. And he only turned 30 in October 2008. Sehwag is unorthodox, yet his batting skills vouch for the soundness of the time-tested art of batsmanship. Head completely still and movement of feet only once the ball is delivered. The only other player in the last decade who can be compared to him is Sanath Jayasuriya, but Sehwag is tighter and plays straighter, and hence is more consistent in all conditions, as shown by the fact that he has extended the last 11 of his 15 Test centuries to date past 150. His hand-eye co-ordination, grooved on the smooth concrete driveway beside the family home on the outskirts of Delhi, is freakish, and it allows him to predetermine his strokes. Virender Sehwag is a marvel of modern times, a genius who has confounded conventional wisdom, whose daring is now a part of cricket's folklore.

[aceofbase]

from wisden again... Several strong candidates advanced their case to be the Leading Cricketer in the World in 2009. None, however, made such an impact as to displace the incumbent, Virender Sehwag, India's 31-year-old opening batsman, who extended the sport's traditional boundaries further still. He scored more quickly than any specialist batsman in Tests or one-day internationals. Last year he broke Test cricket's sound barrier by scoring at more than a run a ball. Australia's former captain Ian Chappell, in as good a position to judge as anybody alive, directly compared Sehwag to Sir Donald Bradman: they have the fastest scoring-rate among players of their generation, and are the only men to have exceeded 290 three times in Tests. Chappell called Sehwag "the greatest destroyer since the U-boat", and dismissed the accusation that he prospered only in home conditions by pointing out that he averaged almost 50 abroad. Sehwag raised the bar even higher than in 2008, when he had scored at strike-rate of 85 runs per 100 balls in Tests, and 120 in one-day internationals. In 2009 he did not play so much, after injuring his right shoulder during the second IPL, and for much of the year the giant rested. It was no coincidence that, in his absence, India were knocked out in the early stages of both the World Twenty20 and the Champions Trophy. He still played in all of India's Test matches in 2009 - a three-Test series in New Zealand and another at home to Sri Lanka - and, in steering them to No. 1 in the Test rankings for the first time, Sehwag averaged 70, with a strike-rate of 108.9. Adam Gilchrist had set a new standard with his strike-rate of 81.9 while averaging 47 in Tests, but he did so almost entirely from the relative comfort of No. 7 in one of the greatest Test teams of all. Sehwag has taken on the opposition from the first ball of India's innings, shredding their confidence with his strokeplay, demoralising them as no Test batsman has done since Bradman, who scored at 61.2 per 100 balls. In one-day internationals in 2009 Sehwag had a strike-rate of 136.5 - again, far higher than any batsman of substance has achieved over a lengthy period - while averaging 45. "The feat of the year", as Chappell called it, came when Test cricket returned to the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai last December. Sri Lanka scored 366 for eight on the opening day as they attempted, in the last match of the series, to overturn India's 1-0 lead. Next morning they continued to 393 all out; 79 overs remained in the day. Few would have thought of winning the game from this position, rather than settling for a draw. Sehwag did. By the close of the second day he had scored 284 not out from 239 balls with 40 fours and seven sixes - and Sri Lanka are Asia's best fielding side. By dispiriting bowlers Sehwag has made batting so much easier for team-mates. Rangana Herath made a fine comeback last year as Sri Lanka's left-arm spinner, yet, when he came on to bowl, Sehwag went down the pitch to drive his second ball for six. Herath's fellow spinner was Muttiah Muralitharan, his captain Kumar Sangakkara - a candidate himself to be the Leading Cricketer in the World. But Sehwag still surged to the second-fastest Test double-hundred ever recorded, from only 168 balls. Those of us who saw the fastest - Nathan Astle's from 153 balls against England - would vouch that Christchurch's drop-in pitch played as flawlessly as an artificial one. Sehwag, not surprisingly, could not continue in the same vein next morning and was dismissed for 293 from 254 balls. But by then India had taken a first innings lead, and Sehwag had given his team so much time that even though Sri Lanka made more than 300 in their second innings as well, India won by an innings early on the fifth day, and took the series 2-0 to claim top spot. While Sehwag was batting at the Brabourne, South Africa and England were preparing for a one-day international in Durban, and a television in Kingsmead's pavilion was switched on silently while the captains did their press conferences. Both Graeme Smith and Andrew Strauss kept looking at the distant screen to watch Sehwag. One definition of genius is doing what nobody else can: and in 2009 Sehwag batted like nobody else has ever done for any length of time. Sehwag learned to bat on a driveway of smooth concrete beside his house on the outskirts of Delhi, with a younger brother and neighbours to bowl taped tennis balls quickly. If he had an identical twin, who batted at the same rate as Viru in 2009, India would score 600 in a day of 90 overs. Test cricket has been threatened by the greater excitement that is perceived in 50-over and 20-over cricket; it will not be if more batsmen emulate Sehwag, as he pushes back the parameters and scores at the same rate in Tests as others do in Twenty20. Strauss was nominated by several correspondents who were consulted about this award. Besides leading England's improvement in Test cricket to regain the Ashes, and squaring the four-Test series in South Africa, he also resurrected England's 50-over cricket. But England under Strauss lost a Test series in the West Indies, which none of the main Test-playing countries had done for six years, although allowance has to be made for the fact that the captain had no say in his squad's selection after his hurried appointment; and, in one-day cricket, England were hammered 7-1 by Australia during the year. Tillakaratne Dilshan was the other main nominee. His case rests more on limited-overs than on Test cricket: if we deduct the Chittagong Test, in which he scored two hundreds, he averaged 52.80 last year, and did not make the Wisden Test XI as he gained only one of the three selectors' votes. Superb in his hand-eye co-ordination, Dilshan came ever closer to Sehwag in his approach as he was promoted to open the batting for Sri Lanka in all three formats, without ever surpassing the trendsetter. He scored more runs in Twenty20 internationals than anybody else last year (471), although none inthe World Twenty20 final at Lord's. He can be credited with popularising the scoop on bended knee over the shoulder, but not its invention. Sehwag has to be first on the team-sheet to represent the World, whatever the game's format. He would take on the Martians, however hostile and alien their attack, disrupting their lines and wavelengths; and, if he succeeded, as he normally does, he would make life so much easier for those who followed.