Virender Sehwag is the best opening batsman of all time

Damning with faint praise indeed.

This describes him best,

Sehwag now has five of the 10 fastest double-centuries in history, including three of the first four. This though is a man utterly insouciant when it comes to such landmarks. He could well go on to obliterate Lara's record tomorrow. He certainly has a great chance to put even Bradman in the shade and score a third triple. None of those possibilities is likely to make him lose sleep though. For someone who has reduced batting to its most elemental, only the next ball matters. If it's there to be hit, regardless of whether he's on 299 or 399, he'll go for it. Which is precisely why it's such a bloody privilege to watch him play.

The One wrote:nobody in the history of cricket has

a freak as much as gilchrist. i think his slowest hundred is at a s/r of 80 or something. double hundreds (and triples) at better than a run a ball. ridiculous

Indeed.

12/17 of his test tons have been in excess of 150, and 6/17 in excess of 200.

Thats awesome conversion rate for someone who never ever opened in FC cricket till he was asked to do so in an away test match. Plus, for someone who never moves his feat and who doesn't have much of a technique to survive as a test batsman let alone as an opener.

You woofed him proper, you bunch of tossers.

Hobbs is, of course, the best opening batsman of all time.

Was hoping to wake up to a world record, nevermind.

I was hoping to wake up and see some sort of fireworks. Oh well, Brendan Nash is was instead!

I was hoping to just wake up.

No you weren't Smerk, you were counting sheep.

**sighs** my first Welsh joke in nearly 2 years.....

Brass Monkey wrote:
**sighs** my first Welsh joke in nearly 2 years.....

And you call the Welsh slow?

knew he wouldnt get the record but the triple was on. SG at work again (3.54 and 3.59am)

hes probably got another couple of years before his eye/fitness starts to let him down imo

Sehwag or SG? Both on a rich vein of form at the moment.

SG wrote:This describes him best,

Sehwag now has five of the 10 fastest double-centuries in history, including three of the first four. This though is a man utterly insouciant when it comes to such landmarks. He could well go on to obliterate Lara's record tomorrow. He certainly has a great chance to put even Bradman in the shade and score a third triple. None of those possibilities is likely to make him lose sleep though. For someone who has reduced batting to its most elemental, only the next ball matters. If it's there to be hit, regardless of whether he's on 299 or 399, he'll go for it. Which is precisely why it's such a bloody privilege to watch him play.

Against Betty Swollocks and her troupe of performing unicyclists.

this may just be true.

Sehwag has helped his team rise to #1 test cricket unit.
far better than likes of BCL and SG who just played to make their own records.

We will never know how Sehwag would have fared in the age of Windies domination when raw pace and zero guards for batsman ruled the game. When sheer pace and absolute live tracks called the shots. Don't think Sehwag can be called the best of all the openers. Maybe one among the best though or one among the greatest openers ever. But definately not the best or the greatest above all. But the thing to ponder is how much runs would the great openers of that bygone era have made, had they been confronted with the kind of toygun bowling attacks and dead batting tracks that rule today's game with batsman friendly rules.....

I have no doubt Sehwag will get another 300 soon though.

>> When sheer pace and absolute live tracks called the shots.

when the windians used to call the shots, there weren't any batsmen who squared up to them in any case.

you will find the odd innings from Gooch, an innings here or there from Atherton, I remember an innings from Michael Slater that was truly inspired when he faced upto Allan Donald. But that's about it. It was usually an inspired innings from somebody etc.

Given that Sehwag plays without fear, he wouldn' have been too perturbed by the windian attack as well. He doesn't fear any attack, atleast that's the belief system he follows to.

Contrast this with the attitude of Manjrekar or a Shastri, now those two were mediocre talents will fit the description of trembling in their boots when facing upto the likes of Marshall, Patterson etc.

to put it short, there is no batsman alive or dead who performed consistently against the West Indian pace quartet ver 1.0 (Garner, Roberts, Croft, Holding) or ver 1.1 (Ambrose, Walsh, Patterson, Marshall)

Shastri was a bowler and a lower order bat like Jayasurya when he started out. So whatever he achieved as a makeshift opener and an all rounder is appreciable. I wouldn't compare him in the first place with specialist greats because the comparision would be grossly unfair.

It certainly helps Sehwag to play in his carefree fashion when he has the likes of Dravid, VVS, SRT and Dhoni following him.

Same could be said about most great batsmen of yesteryears as well.

SG wrote:Same could be said about most great batsmen of yesteryears as well.

Now that you mentioned the past greats, a few thoughts come to my mind that I wish to share.

Among our past great teams when Gavaskar topped our batting, only Vishwanath, Kapil and Vengasarkar commanded some respect for consistancy. The Srikanths, M. Amarnaths, Shastris, etc. were too inconsistant. The transistion team again saw Azharuddin who was below par in Zim, Aus and WI as he couldn't play on bouncy wickets, a 'technically gifted' Manjrekar who was the anti thesis of Dravid and a few more inconsistant matchwinners like Sidhu, Shastri, Prabhakar, Binny, Sandip Patil etc. We did not have consistantly good supply of pace bowlers and batsmen in the middle who played consistantly as well as we had since 2000 onwards.

I think the past teams were equally talented but lacking severely in the mental toughness and self belief department. Even when we won tests and sometimes series in places like WI, England, Aus and NZ we could not carry the momentum gained forward due to a the same lack of self belief. The tendency to be complacant, basking in achieving a once in a while rubber win was yet another malaise we suffered from.

That of course only changed after a certain SC Ganguly took charge...

By the way, re the discussion above about how the Sehwag would have played the West Indians, I don't think pace would have been the problem for Sehwag (although constanly lifting that heavy bat to eye level throughout a day would have been tiring). His bigger problem would have been the swing which is basically non-existent in modern cricket.

tendulkar used to change to a lighter bat on bouncier wickets. I remember against a series in South Africa, both SRT and VS used light bats against AD, FanieDeVilliers etc.

I don't think VS ever played against de Villiers.