WAY FORWARD FOR VIRENDRA SEHWAG....!

The third test match in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy between India and Australia gets underway at Mohali from 14^th March 2013.

Virendra Sehwag has been DROPPED from the squad and the selectors also have not named any replacement for him, thereby reducing the squad strength from 15 to 14.

In all probabilities, Shikhar Dhawan would make his debut and partner Murali Vijay in opening the batting for Team India, unless Dhoni springs up a surprise.

For the records, Virendra Sehwag has played 104 Test Matches, scoring a total of 8,568 runs, at an average of 49.34 with a strike rate of 82.23 with the highest score of 319.  He has 2 triple centuries, 23 centuries and 32 half-centuries to his credit (stats courtesy… www.cricinfocom).

The strike rate of 82.23 in test matches gives an insight about the aggressive batting that Sehwag is known for and the pace at which he has been accumulating the runs.

Of late Sehwag’s game has suffered a lot. The last time that Sehwag scored big was 117 against England in Nov 2012. Thereafter his scores have been 25, 30, 9, 23, 49, 0, 2, 19 and 6. With these unimpressive numbers the selectors felt that it was necessary to look beyond Sehwag and dropped him from the squad.

Now, where does Sehwag go from here? Is this the ‘end of the road’ for him?

Well, he has gone on record to say that he will ‘work on his game’ and, for sure, make a comeback. Any die-hard cricket fan would want exactly that. The crowd thronging to the cricket ground just wants Sehwag to ‘wield the willow’ and thrash very bowler ‘under the sun’.

All that now required for Sehwag, is to play any kind of cricket that coms his way and get to strike the ball, the way he is known to strike. He just needs to accumulate runs under his belt. This would help him regain his lost confidence.

The ideal platform now coming his way is the domestic league, IPL. Sehwag should look to score really big in all the games and be a backbone for his team, Delhi Daredevils. This will really put him in the right frame of mind.

Saurav Ganguly, when dropped on account of form (or the lack of it) spent a lot of time, training, playing domestic games representing Bengal and also played for a local Kolkata club. This exercise brought him amongst the runs and the selectors were left with no option but to recall him to the team. This happened with Ganguly, not once, not twice………but THREE times. Every time he was dropped, he came back that much stronger…….and the rest is all history.

Similarly Sehwag should look to play the domestic games for his state, play some kind of club cricket, if possible, and be amongst the runs.

Another area which Viru should seriously consider is getting a COUNTY contract. One good season with an English County would do a ‘world of good’ for him and this is ‘the best’ that could happen to him.

If he is able to go through this exercise of playing a successful county season then his recall to the national team would be sooner, than later.

In all probabilities every supporter of Team India would want Virendra Sehwag to strike form and be ready for the grueling South Africa tour, scheduled towards the end of this year.

Can he do it……..Can’t he do it……….let us wait and watch……………!

K Subramanian

12 March 2013