By CricketCountry Staff
Renowned Australian cricket writer Robert Craddock has opined that Indian opening batsman Virender Sehwag could end his career as the greatest opening batsman of all time.
Published: Dec 23, 2011, 12:47 PM (IST)
Edited: Dec 23, 2011, 12:47 PM (IST)
Australian cricket writer Robert Craddock feels Virender Sehwag’s average and strike rate as an opener makes him the most destructive opener of all time © Getty Images
By CricketCountry Staff
Melbourne: Dec 23, 2011
Renowned Australian cricket writer Robert Craddock has opined that Indian opening batsman Virender Sehwag could end his career as the greatest opening batsman of all time.
Craddock wrote in a column in Herald Sun, “Sehwag is the most under-rated player of his generation and by the time he is finished he may be regarded as the greatest opening batsman of all time.
“Consider these facts. Sehwag has been playing Test cricket for a decade and averages an exceptional 52.16 in his 92 Tests.
That alone is impressive enough but his killer credential is his strike rate.
He scores at the astonishing rate of 82 runs per hundred balls, a clip so swift he makes renowned dashers Ian Botham (60.71), Chris Gayle (59.1) and Andrew Flintoff (62.04) look batting barnacles by comparison. “
The Australian writer feels Sehwag enjoys his batting which is a secret to his success. He mentioned one example of the same.
“When he once asked a West Australian coach to help him with a batting session in Perth it lasted for five hours because that was how long Sehwag intended to bat for,” wrote Craddock.
He also quoted former India coach Greg Chappell who found Sehwag’s unconventional approach to batting.
“He was a guy I really warmed to, a likeable scallywag but his problem was he never had to work at his talent.
“We had conversations where I asked him what motivated him. Really there was nothing. He just loved making runs on his terms. If he couldn’t get them the way he wanted he probably wasn’t going to.
“He was good enough that he could get runs when he absolutely needed them. A little more suffering might have helped him,” Chappell had said.
Craddock also justified his thought by stating a study done by a university to rate batsmen of all time. He wrote,” A study by several university boffins several years ago, which looked beyond cold numbers into conditions and match scenarios ago, ranked him the sixth best batsman of all time, ahead of Tendulkar and Gavaskar among Indian greats. “
