Muttiah Muralitharan scared me off: Virender Sehwag

Former explosive Indian opener Virender Sehwag was known for his ‘care-free’ style of batting. Sehwag is the only Indian cricketer to have scored two triple hundreds. He had the reputation of slamming a six in order to bring a milestone, whether it is the 90’s, 190’s or 290’s. In many ways than one, Sehwag has redefined the art of opening. He has played 104 Tests, 251 ODIs and 19 T20Is, scoring over 17000 runs across the three formats of the game.

In an exclusive chat with India TV, Sehwag revealed that he had fears facing Sri Lankan legendary spinner Muttiah Muralitharan. The right-handed Indian batter said that it was very difficult to pick Muralitharan and it wasn’t easy at all to bat against him.

“Although I was not scared to face any bowler but Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling action, facial expressions scared me off. He used to bowl the doosra which was not easy to pick,” Sehwag said during the chat show.

Sehwag’s statement

Sehwag had earlier made a revelation of how former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly sacrificed his batting position in order to promote MS Dhoni at the top of the order.  “We were experimenting with the batting order at that time. We decided that if we get a good opening partnership then Sourav Ganguly would come at No 3 but if we had a bad opening stand then we would send pinch hitters like Irfan Pathan or MS Dhoni to accelerate the scoring rate.” he said.

Sehwag on the T20I series against Australia

When it comes to the ongoing T20I series between India and Australia, Sehwag said that India will clean sweep the series 3-0 against David Warner’s men. “I think India will win 3-0 in the T20 series because we have beaten them 3-0 in Australia. So, I think we can easily beat Australia 3-nil in our own backyard,”