For the second time in career, Sehwag compared to Tendulkar

As a young man in 2001, making his international debut, Virender Sehwag was compared to the legendary Sachin Tendulkar, as being similar in playing style and physical stature.

Today, 12 years later, Sehwag has the honour of being compared to Tendulkar yet again. (I’m not going to go into reasons why – there are too many death threats in comments of late).

“It’s an honour for me”, wheezed Virender Sehwag, who is getting ample exercise these days walking from the middle to the pavilion. “Most people get the chance to get compared to legends only once in their career… It’s an honour to be compared twice.”

Indeed, many cricketers have been compared to greatness only to see it fizzle away later. Irfan Pathan was supposed to be the genetic mutation of Wasim Akram and Kapil Devl. Tino Best was supposed to be a diminutive Curtly Ambrose. Santakumaran Sreesanth was supposed  to be the next Gary Sobers (no, really). But loftiness has not been achieved because of various reasons – ranging from poor fitness to distractions due to a promising dancing career.

This makes Sehwag’s achievement all the more significant.

“Today, the similarity between Tendulkar and Sehwag are more apparent than ever before.”, said an expert on a cricket show. “After all, both of them are legends which their respective teams are scared to drop. Bowlers regret getting them out knowing that they’ve probably lost their team a chance to victory. Both…” At this point, the cricket expert was beaten to death by fans who believed that a batting average of 24 in 10 tests in one year was enough to justify a place in the team (which, interestingly, is a little bit below that of the man compared to him twice.

Sehwag was not resting on his laurels, of course. “I hope to emulate my hero for a long time to come,” leading many scared fans of Indian cricket to believe that he would not be retiring for a long time to come.

In other news, Delhi Daredevils have called for an immediate two-tier system in which the top 7 teams of the IPL only get to play in the main league. “This will ensure that the teams remain competitive, nobody gets complacement, and hehe – it’s the only way we’ll be at the top of a table, to be honest”, quipped a member of the senior management of Delhi Daredevils. We tried getting in touch with the communications manager of Pune Warriors XI for a statement but couldn’t – he was fired for opening up Naukri.com on his computer at work.