Former legendary opener Virender Sehwag was once the darling of cricket fans worldwide in batting. He had a huge fan base in India and all parts of the world because he was one of the greatest entertainers of all time in cricket.
Sehwag was an attacking batsman that approached all formats equally. Now he has made a big revelation. Shewag has revealed that he has planned to retire from ODI cricket during the 2008 tour of Australia. Sehwag has revealed that batting legend Sachin Tendulkar stopped me from that decision.
In 2008, India played a tri-nation ODI series in Australia. Apart from India and Australia, Sri Lanka was the third team in the tournament. Virender Sehwag has been in India’s playing XI for just five of India’s ten matches. India replaced him in the remaining matches due to poor performance.
Sehwag’s scores were 6, 33, 11 and 14 in the first four matches. With this, captain MS Dhoni dropped him from the playing XI. After that, Viru was given another chance against Australia. But with 14 runs out of it, the team was out again. However, India had beaten Australia in the first two finals of the best of three.
Speaking on the cricbuzz show, Virender Sehwag revealed that he was seriously considering retiring in 2008. When I was with the Indian team in 2008, questions about retirement came to my mind. I returned to the national team through the Test series and scored 150 runs. But in three or four attempts in ODIs, I could not score much. So MS Dhoni dropped me from the playing XI.
Around the time I was excluded from the ODI team, I began to think about retiring from this format. I could retire from ODIs and continue playing in Tests.
But this time, it was Sachin Tendulkar who stopped me from retiring. He told me- this is the worst stage of your life. Return home after this tour. Think carefully about what you want to do and then decide what to do next. “Fortunately, I did not announce his retirement that day,” Sehwag said.
