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Find of West Indies tour - Virendra Sehwag, the off-spinner.

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Almost every time, we have the talent somewhere inside us but we ourselves don't know. And many a times, we are forced in some kind of situations where we just have to explore that part of us and we find that we are quite natural to it... isn't it??

Virendra Sehwag is a prime example of that. He first came into Indian team when he was 21 years, 6 months and 10 days old, with just two years of domestic cricket and made his entry as a spinner who used to copy Indian batting master Sachin Tendulkar while batting. Sehwag made 1 run in his first ODI innings against Pakistan at Mohali, and gave away 35 runs off his first 3 overs in International cricket. That was the last league match of that Pepsi Cup that also included Sri Lanka and that performance by Sehwag meant that he was dropped for the next match..

It took nearly two years when Sehwag got his next opportunity against Australians at M Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore where he made 58 off just 54 balls with 8 fours - most of them with square cuts and later on took 3 wickets to win the match for India. After that, Team India went to South Africa. Our team was down and nearly out of that first test match at Bloemfontein, after slipping to 68 for 4 in just 20.3 over, but there was something special which neither an Indian, or a South African will ever forget. Two Tendulkars, one formally known as Virendra Sehwag blasted African bowling all over the park and both of them scored centuries... Since then, he has never looked back..

He started to open the batting for India when Sachin was not there in Sri Lanka, and then made the highest test match individual score by an Indian - 309 against Pakistan at Multan. And very recently, he just missed by one run to score a century in test match cricket before lunch break in test match cricket - a record which only 4 batsmen has been able to achieve.

We all loved his attacking batsmanship and he himself earned lots of praise. And money as well, but somewhere down the line, we all forgot the bowler he had in himself. And off - spinner who could flight the ball, dip and drift the ball and extract lots of spin from the pitch. I remember him taking the wicket of Mark Boucher at Centurion when India had made a small total of 233 runs and were trying to defend it. India had Agarkar, Kumble and Harbhajan to take initail 7 wickets but them Lance Klusener and Mark Boucher brought S

outh Africa back into that ODI with a partnership of 77 runs. Sehwag forced Boucher to play a miss timed sweep shot and then Makhaya Ntini to finish off South African resistance..here's that scorecard.

Believe me, that match was nearly out of India's hands but Sehwag - the bowler, brought us back...And very recently, in West Indies, he took 4 wickets - of Chanderpaul, Ramdin and twice of Dwayne Bravo in the first test at Antigua, which India nearly won it. Today, on 12th of June, 2006, he again took 3 west Indies wickets and forced them to follow on. All I am trying to say is that you look at this carefree batsman little more closely and you will find a brilliant off spinner as well. I am sure Rahul Dravid has seen it recently and that's why he didn't include Harbhajan Singh or even Ramesh Powar into the second test at St. Lucia.

Before this West Indies series, Sehwag had just 3 test match wickets, but now he has added 7 more wickets in just two test matches with one more innings to be played. His control over the ball is simply amazing and bowls his straighter ones very smartly... I think he should be tried lot more which I am sure Dravid will certainly do..!!

Its Only Cricket

Find of West Indies tour - Virendra Sehwag, the off-spinner.

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