Difficult to Find a Selfless Batsman Like Virender Sehwag: Kumar Sangakkara

Sri Lanka’s legendary batsman Kumar Sangakkara showered praise on former Indian opener Virender Sehwag. Sangakkara has always been a big admirer of former India’s flamboyant batsman. Sehwag had revolutionized the game and always loved taking the attack on the bowler. The match situation took a back seat in Sehwag’s dictionary and he always batted with no fear.

Kumar Sangakkara believes it is difficult to find a selfless batsman like Virender Sehwag. The Delhi batsman achieved great success in his career and he was able to give a good start to India on multiple occasions.

Furthermore, Sehwag had a strike rate of 82 in Test match cricket. In fact, he is the only Indian batsman to score two triple hundreds in red ball version. Moreover, he also scored a double ton in ODI cricket.

Sangakkara heaped praise on Virender Sehwag while writing in Titans of Cricket for Wisden.com.

Sangakkara writes “I’ve been a great admirer of Virender Sehwag ever since I first saw him play. Not just because of his phenomenal ability, but because his mindset was all about scoring runs as quickly as humanly possible.”

Meanwhile, Sangakkara believes Sehwag had a simple technique which helped in scoring runs quickly. Sehwag always liked to score his runs at a brisk pace.

“This is a very rare feature in most batsmen. While most of them are content to accumulate runs in a considered and structured manner, with Sehwag, it was about getting to that position of dominance from ball one of his innings in as short a time as possible. Sehwag was never a player to think about his average or records; his one and only ambition were to score runs for his side, score them quickly, and end up on the winning side as a result.”

“His technique was very simple, based around a great eye, high and free hands, minimal footwork, great balance, and excellent wrists. He would always try to open up the off-side, to get the bowlers bowling at the stumps because the stumps for him didn’t exist; he just had a bat in his hands to hit the ball, gaps in the field to penetrate, and a boundary to find,” Sangakkara writes about Sehwag.

Furthermore, Kumar Sangakkara talked about his two favourite innings that Sehwag played. In fact, Sehwag could have become the only batsman to score three triple hundred had he scored seven more runs against Sri Lanka.

“There are two innings that particularly stand out. The first, in 2008 at Galle, was the most impressive innings of his that I’ve ever seen and it falls into the same category of performance as Brian Lara scoring 688 runs against us in a series. India came into the game 1-0 down in the series, Ajantha Mendis having run through them at the SSC on his debut. Every Indian batsman was being bamboozled by Murali and Mendis, but Virender came out all guns blazing. He carried his bat for 201 from 231 balls in a total of 329 in a side full of legends.”

“And then in 2009 at Mumbai he put the match beyond us with a wonderful innings where he again took most of our bowlers to task, and with the pace he scored the runs – his 293 came from just 254 balls – it meant that India had the time to win the game despite us scoring more than 700 runs in the game,” he added.

Virender Sehwag always played the game without any fear and thus he achieved great success during his career. On the other hand, Kumar Sangakkara also did a great job for the Sri Lankan side.