Some interesting facts of Sehwag’s Innings of 201 NOTOUT against Sri Lanka

Some interesting facts of Sehwag’s Innings of 201 NOTOUT against Sri Lanka:

 

1.                    Only the second Indian after Sunil Gavaskar to remain unconquered on an imperious 201.

2.                    This was his fifth double century.

3.                    With 201* he posted 11th consecutive 150+ score.

4.                    When on 199 sehwag pushed a Murlitharan off-break past point towards the ropes. The single was there for the taking and so was his double hundred but incredibly he refused the single. Because it was the third ball of Murli’s over and he didn’t want to expose last man Ishant Sharma to three deliveries of Murli. Even on 199 he wasn’t just thinking of his double hundred but longer innings of the team.

5.                    Then on the fifth ball of that over he played a reverse seep and connected alright as he was still the same carefree Sehwag who used to hit a six to get his first triple hundred.

6.                    the next delivery (last delivery) of the same over nudged the ball past square-leg to reach his double ton  and also retained strike. But in the next Mendis over he gave strike to Ishant Sharma to face just last two balls and Ishant Sharma got out. J

7.                    Adjectives like aggressive, destructive, scintillating, nerveless, confident are routinely used to describe the batting of Virender Sehwag. You don’t have to be an expert to see that he can murder any bowling on his day. But have you noticed how the term “great” is almost never used to describe Sehwag, unlike his colleagues, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman and Sourav Ganguly.
    The omission seems particularly strange given the fact that if you go by the numbers Viru at the current stage of his career has achieved much more than any of these ‘Fab Four’ had done at similar stages of their career. In fact, Sunil Gavaskar is the only Indian batsman whose statistics could measure up to the Najafgarh Bomber’s.
    We did a comparison of all Indians who have scored 5,000 or more runs in Test cricket after 99 innings – the number that Sehwag has played so far. Barring Gavaskar, not a single one of them had as many runs as Viru’s 5,052. With the exception of Gavaskar again and Sachin, nobody had as high an average.
    Of course, nobody including Gavaskar and Sachin had as many scores of 200 or more as Sehwag. In fact, between them the remaining nine batsmen had 5 double hundreds in their first 99 innings, the same number as Viru alone has today. Let’s also not forget that he has the only two 300-plus scores by Indians and that the last 11 times he has scored a century, he has gone on to cross 150. He now also has the distinction of having carried his bat through, something not achieved even by Gavaskar – the only other Indian to have ever done it – at the same stage of his career.
    True, Gavaskar and Sachin had more hundreds after 99 innings than Sehwag has, but neither of them could boast the sort of conversion rate – from 50s to 100s – that he has. Of the 28 occasions that the Delhi maestro has crossed 50 in a Test innings, 15 have resulted in three digit scores.
    The conversion from 50s to 100s, from 100s to 150s, from 150s to 200s and on to 300s, taken along with the sheer volume of runs and the average he has maintained over such a long period tells us how unfair it is to regard Sehwag as just a destructive batsman.
    Yes, his strike rate of over 77 is way above those of Sachin, Dravid, Laxman or Ganguly. Strike rates are not available for Gavaskar, Mohammad Azharuddin, G.R. Viswanath, Dilip Vengsarkar or Kapil Dev, but it is a safe bet that none of them – with the possible exception of Kapil – scored their Test runs at anything approaching the frenetic pace that Sehwag sets.
    But why should that exclude him from greatness? The numbers are screaming the facts – he gets more runs than others, more consistently, and when he gets going he makes it count big. If he also gets them quick so much the better.
    The truth is that by any yardstick, Sehwag is one of India’s greatest Test batsmen ever. Perhaps he does not get recognized as such because we are prey to the false notion that Test batting must be about grit, not flair.
1 At Galle on Friday, Sehwag (201 not out off 231 balls) became the first Indian batsman to register a double hundred against Sri Lanka. The earlier best was Md Azharuddin’s 199 at Kanpur in 1986-87. 2 Sehwag also became the first visiting batsman to hit a double hundred at Galle. The previous best by a visiting batsman at this venue was 178 by Brian Lara for West Indies in 2001-02 3 On Friday, Sehwag became the second Indian batsman to register five double hundreds in Test cricket. Rahul Dravid was the first to achieve the distinction. 4 Sehwag is now the second Indian batsman to carry his bat through a completed innings. Sunil Gavaskar (127 not out against Pakistan at Faisalabad in January 1983 and sehwag 201 not out) was the first to achieve the feat. 5 During the calendar year 2008, Sehwag, in seven Tests, has aggregated 897 at 81.54, second to SA’s Graeme Smith, who has 979 runs in 10 Tests.

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