With cricket coming to a standstill, the current and former players are taking it to different social media platforms to talk about life in the sport and beyond. During one such video, former Pakistan player Rashid Latif talked about Virender Sehwag.
Heaping praise on the former Indian batsman, Latif said that he was a fearless cricketer who had a great influence on the team.
"He used to play to dominate. We are used to openers who were a bit circumspect at the beginning, gauging how the pitch is, who the bowler is whether (Glenn) McGrath, Brett Lee, Wasim Akram or Shoaib Akhtar," Latif said in a Youtube show called 'Caught Behind'.
"But Sehwag was someone who feared none. He was an impactful player, had a great influence in his team and players like him succeed in world cricket," he added."
During his career, one of the things most often said about Sehwag was that he had a lack of foot movement. However, Latif said that it was wrong and that he had a unique technique.
"It's wrong to say his feet didn't move. He had unique technique with a very strong base. He was superb on the backfoot, used to cut, pull, hook with ease," said Latif.
"He had beautiful balance. People say that he had limited feet movement but that was perhaps the reason why he was so successful. And coaches nowadays have started to say that keep your balance with minimum foot movement."
Sehwag represented India in 104 Tests, 251 ODIs and 19 T20Is in which he scored 8586, 8273 and 394 runs respectively.
"He played with Sachin, played with Rahul and remained under their shadow. If he was playing for any other country then he would've easily crossed 10 thousand runs, only one and a half thousand runs were remaining," said Latif.
"Maybe his team had bigger names, bigger players but opponents were always wary of the impact that Sehwag could have on a game," he added.
(With inputs from IANS)
