India vs Australia 2001 home series witnessed one of the fascinating twists and turns not only on the field, but also off the field. Virender Sehwag, one of the most destructive batsmen in the world of cricket made his debut for India in ODIs and VVS Laxman was recalling an interesting conversation happened between him, Zaheer Khan and Virender Sehwag in his autobiography ‘281 and Beyond’ happened during dinner before Pune ODI.
Virender Sehwag told Laxman that “Laxman bhai, you had a great opportunity to make a triple hundred in the Kolkata Test, but unfortunately, you didn’t. Now you wait and watch, I will become the first Indian to score 300 in Test cricket”. It was a stunning statement made by ‘Nawab of Najafgarh’ andVirender Sehwag’s confident statement to VVS Laxman. Laxman was quite surprised on this outrageous claim. Laxman had a thought that, this guy has just played 4 ODIs and he was no where near the test selection and how come Sehwag was making such a bold statement. Laxman also thought that Sehwag was joking, but he was serious.
Time tickled and Virender Sehwag moved to opening slot from middle order and India toured Pakistan. There were so much of hype about the tour and entire cricket fraternity was watching it closely. First test match was played in Multan and Virender Sehwag went on to score 309 in 375 balls with 39 fours and 6 sixers and earned the tag “Sultan of Multan”. He reached his triple hundred through a sixer which no batsmen would have dared to try and that is typical Virender Sehwag. India went on to score 675 for 5 declared and bundled Pakistan in both the innings to win the first test match comfortably.
After scoring the triple hundred, he went and reminded Laxman about his statement he made a few years back. Still how come Sehwag made such a bold statement during his international debut season? Sehwag answer was simple as below due to the analysis he made on other India batsmen.
Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman were fab four during that time and each one individually needs at least 200 to 250 balls to score a century and for a triple hundred they need at least 600 to 750 balls. It was almost impossible to get an opportunity in Indian batting lineup to play these many balls, but Sehwag was confident that he can score run a ball which boils down to 300+ balls were needed to score a triple century. He planned and he executed perfectly thus become one of the most destructive batsmen in world of cricket.
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