Former Pakistan cricket captain Rashid Latif feels India’s Virender Sehwag would have scored more than 10,000 runs in his Test career had he played for any another country.
The former opener, the only Indian to have scored two triple centuries in Test cricket, finished with 8586 runs from 104 matches in red-ball cricket with 23 centuries. Sehwag played alongside other greats such as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman who transformed India as one of the team to beat.
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However, despite Sehwag’s impressive records, Latif believes the former Delhi batsman remained under the shadows of his contemporaries.
“Sehwag’s record speaks for him. He has eight thousand-plus runs in Test cricket. He is someone who has always remained under the shadows of other players. He played with Sachin, played with Rahul and remained under their shadow. If he was playing for any other country then he would’ve easily crossed 10 thousand runs, only one and a half thousand runs were remaining,” Latif said on Youtube show Caught Behind.
“Maybe his team had bigger names, bigger players but opponents were always wary of the impact that Sehwag could have on a game.”
Latif said Sehwag’s fearless attitude separated him from other batsmen as he wasn’t scared of facing world-class bowlers.
“He used to play to dominate. We are used to openers who were a bit circumspect at the beginning, gauging how the pitch is, who the bowler is whether [Glenn] McGrath, Brett Lee, Wasim Akram or Shoaib Akhtar. But Sehwag was someone who feared none. He was an impactful player, had a great influence in his team and players like him succeed in world cricket,” Latif added.
Latif was also in awe of Sehwag’s technique and rejected the notion that the former India opener didn’t make use of his footwork while batting.
“It’s wrong to say his feet didn’t move. He had unique technique with a very strong base. Was superb on the backfoot, used to cut, pull, hook with ease. In Sydney Test Brett Lee was bowling to him with a third man and deep point in the first over a Test match,” he said.
“He had beautiful balance. People say that he had limited feet movement but that was perhaps the reason why he was so successful. And coaches nowadays have started to say that keep your balance with minimum foot movement,” Latif added.
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