In present time, India is no.1 team in ICC test rankings. It has been achieved by team effort. For this achievement, Sehwag plays a very important role. This blog post focusses on Sehwag’s contribution to Indian team. For winning matches, it doesn’t matter how long you spend time on crease but the more important is how long other team bats. Test match is more about taking 20 wickets than scoring lot of runs. More time for bowling side, greater are the chances to take 20 wickets. There are more chances of winning if a team devotes more sessions on bowling than batting. So if a team is looking positively for win rather than a draw it is necessary it provides about eight-nine sessions for the other team to bat. Doing this the team will be left with six–seven sessions to bat for itself. So for scoring a big total in this left over period it is necessary that team scores runs at a rate of 3.50 to 4.00. This means if a side has to win the match it should also give importance to the run rate.
When Virender Sehwag plays well, then run rate soars at about 5.00-5.50. After he leaves the crease the run rate sags. Finally overall run rate is about 3.50-3.80 which is good for making a sufficient total. So it can be concluded that run rate also matters in winning a test match. Sehwag is also known for playing long innings. He has played 79 test matches and scored 7039 runs. Doing this he has hit 21 hundreds and thirteen times he reached the feet of 150. Sehwag has a strike rate of 81.56 with average of 54.14 in test. He has hit two triple hundred in test matches. Sir Don Bradman and Brian Lara have also hit triple hundred twice.
Sehwag can also act as a breakthrough bowler. Till now he has taken 39 wickets with a 5-wicket haul. On Sri Lanka tour 2010, his bowling figures were better than Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha. In test, he has won man of the match award eight times and five times has been awarded man of the series.
Sehwag doesn’t play well in fourth match innings. He has played 52 innings and scored 546 runs at an meagre average of 28.73 with just five 50s. But one inning will always be remembered by every Indian as well as barmy-army. It was first test match of England tour of India 2008, in Chennai. India needed 387 runs to win and four sessions were left. The condition of pitch wasn’t good. In the last session of fourth day Sehwag hit throttling 83 runs of just 68 deliveries with 11 fours and 4 sixes. So on fifth day , India required a modest 256 runs which was easily made by Sachin and Yuvraj.
For a vague idea of who is the biggest match winner for India, we are taking reference of this data(courtesy cricinfo). This data sheet shows few Indian greats with their total matches. It shows how many times has India won , lost or drawn the match when they were in playing eleven. By the study we can observe that losing percent is almost same under every player but the winning percentage is comparatively higher when Sehwag plays. Thus it won’t be tough to say Sehwag is a big match winner for India.
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(*) as a superscript above figures show that a match was tie
