An Open letter to Ravi Shastri ! Please Give us a break about Sehwag

Dear Mr. Ravi Shastri !!!!!!!

Just want to express my frustration, anger and irritation about why every single time you are talking about ‘Sehwag should be in the team‘.

We all do admire you for being a very good commentator with all your histrionics, analysis and polished English, Glamour that you bring to the commentary box(and of course lot others in the stands too) etc and many other things, after your retirement from Cricket as a player.

Whenever India lost a match these days and Sehwag was not in the team, you are the first guy and talk about Sehwag should be in the team. You are getting on to my last nerve all these days but today I couldn’t take it any more so thought letting it out now here. Don’t every(may be most of us) single cricket fan in the country know about how great or destructive Sehwag is/was, but we also remember about Sehwag’s contribution to the team in the recent matches. And more over did India win all the matches where/when Sehwag was there? If not, then what’s your problem?

When will you understand, it’s not about winning just one or two matches and it’s very high time to construct Team India? Given the politics, as there is no way the Trio (we all know who they are) won’t be taken out immediately to give a chance to the youth, we might have to take out either Gautham Gambhir or Rohit Sharma or Robin Uthappa? Is that what you want Ravi? Definitely No from all of us, cricketing fans. If you are quoting couple of runs in a destructive way scored by Sehwag in just say 200 years back, wouldn’t it be fair to continue support/motivate Gautham Gambir and Rohit Sharma and others for their great, talented, skillful and more over playing according to the conditions on that day rather than Sehwag’s way of scoring 1 run 0.00000001 balls (in other words 30-40 runs in 15-25 balls in say last 30 matches and 65 runs in 45 balls in one match and 80-110 runs in one match where India won in this like 2 or 3 decades ago given the number of one days played by India). But may be the obvious choice is Ganguly, but if you are talking about Sehwag’s contribution 200 years ago, we are not in that short term memory loss stage yet to forget about great contributions made by our old opening duo (Sachin and Saurav) in the recently concluded England series.

Knowing that Sehwag’s statement always is as I quote : “I never ever change my batting style“. Come on! Give us all a break. Oh Yeah! The BCCI already gave him a break and please ask Sehwag/BCCI to repeat it to you.

Look at the way Andrew Symonds played in the third one day, how sensible he played in the middle and showed how destructive he is towards the end, that’s the way to bat. And also you were there the way Gautham, Robin and Rohit played in Twenty-Twenty? So please call up Sehwag and ask him whether he watched these games and if not, please send him a copy of these and ask him to understand and adopt how the game to be played. The main reason for this suggestion is, like you mentioned or keep on mentioning about how other teams will fear about Sehwag’s presence in the team, those days are gone a long time back (for that matter even for Tendulkar too because even a chota mota bowler is bowled him very frequently and knew exactly for the kind of balls he will be out). All the bowlers around the world studied Sehwag very well already and knew very well what/how to bowl. If you forgot or over looked this fact ask the opposition teams they will tell you one thing very simple which is, bowl 2 or 3 dot balls in a row and out of frustration Sehwag will be out as he is unable to dominate (want to say his ego hurts bcoz of the dot balls but without knowing him or the fact it’s not good to use that so not saying it).

With a miserable world cup performance we all lost lot of interest in cricket but unfortunately with a resonably good performance in England and a splendid come back in Twentty-20, once again we are all eagerly watching cricket. But as a cricketing fan, we are not expecting any miracles from Team India and for that matter we are not interested in seeing Team India winning one or two matches in an year by players like Sehwag etc. We rather watch shine these young cricketers got their fair share of support and motiviation from people like you, us and from BCCI etc. This way we are all very hopeful that one day we can see the Winning Team Inda in a consistent fashion.

Sehwag’s style of play will be best suited for Twenty20 as he can’t or rather don’t want to play for more than 15-25 balls these days (occasionally there is an exception to this), and with India winning the first 20:20 championship, which means more Twenty20 matches will be played, let him be there in those matches. But once again the come back has to be the likes of Zaheer or Pathan etc coz then only and this is the only way Sehwag can really win our hearts.

So you alone please stop worrying about Sehwag. When he is working or ready to work really very hard for some time and comfortable to make a come back to the team the way Zaheer Khan with his magnificient performace and also the way Irfan Pathan showing his come back with vengeance attack with all his in/out swing bowling, every single cricket fan in India will root for Sehwag. Until that day comes (we are all hoping and praying all the Gods in India by all religions, to make/happen that day to be very near), PLEASE GIVE US ALL A VERY BIG BREAK.

One of the Cricketing Fans,
From some where in India.