Murali Vijay is the greatest Indian opener outside of Sunil Gavaskar and Virender Sehwag: Ravichandran Ashwin

Former India opener Murali Vijay is at the top of the list of Indian batters with the best conversion rate from fifty to hundred in home Tests. Vijay had 60% conversion rate in the Tests played in India. He has crossed the 50-run mark 15 times in Home Tests in which nine of those are hundreds. This shows that his conversion rate was better than Mohammed Azharuddin, Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma.

No wonder that many got surprised, including Sanjay Manjarekkar, at seeing the former opener’s stats. And it's quite miserable how many cricket fans would have even remembered Vijay's name along with legends like Tendulkar, Dravid, and Gavaskar. It’s Vijay who has made India's opener position his own after the opening combination of Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir came to an end. He couldn’t get off to a good start in his Test career. However, he started to rise as the first-choice opener from 2013 and became one among the best Test openers in the world till 2018. 

Ravichandran Ashwin has got a plenty of things to tell about Vijay, who has played a lot of cricket with him for Tamil Nadu and then for India. The veteran India spinner considers Vijay as the best Indian Test opener after Sunil Gavaskar and Virender Sehwag. Ashwin also compared him with another batting stalwart, Cheteshwar Pujara. He opined that both of them haven’t recognised the way they should be.

"M Vijay, according to me, is the greatest opener for India outside of Sunil Gavaskar and Virender Sehwag," Ashwin wrote for ESPNCricinfo.

"Vijay and Puji are quite similar in that they haven't been celebrated enough. They also had some of the most hilarious arguments. They used to do the most difficult job in Test cricket - play out the new ball in testing conditions, as we tend to need to do whenever we go abroad - so it is par for the course to have a few eccentricities emerge from that kind of partnership,” he said. 

"They could spend a whole session break arguing over a call that Puji wouldn't have responded to. Vijay would try to get others to back him, but Puji would stay firm and say, 'There was no run.' You can get witnesses and evidence and attorneys, but Puji never changes his mind. Nor does he get frustrated with these debates," he added.

Ashwin was all in praise for Pujara and said that he had a great defense. He also said that no one can convince Pujara to change his playing method. For this reason, he said, Pujara always keeps trusting his method. Calling him a beast, Ashwin said, “Just like a beast focuses single-mindedly on its prey, Puji focuses on batting."

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