Virender Sehwag is a bastard and here’s why

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Virender Sehwag is a bastard because he plays too many good innings to keep track of and there aren’t enough superlatives to spread among them.

Consider this: Sehwag’s last Test innings was 131. That was a failure.

His first four Test hundreds were all under 150; all failures. After that, he cranked out 11 successive hundreds in excess of 150. Five of those 11 were over 200 and two of those five were over 300. Can you remember them all? We can’t.

And what do you say about an innings of 195? It’s not ‘unsurpassed’ because it’s frequently been surpassed. It’s not magnificent because then what was the innings we always refer to as ‘the Virender Sehwag 201 not out on a shitty pitch‘?

Ordinarily, if a batsman’s well on track to hit the fastest 300 of all time, you’d feel it might even be acceptable to stoop to poetry. But you thought the same thing the last time Sehwag hit the fastest 300 of all time – he’s trying to break his own record. If you’d cranked out some flowery rhymes back then, where would you be now? You’d have no room for manoeuvre.

You have to reevaluate how you apply adjectives. We’ve a new system:

  • 100 = okay
  • 150 = good
  • 200 = very good
  • 300+ and feats of rapid scoring = special adjectives reserved solely for Virender Sehwag

To knacker up bowling figures and careers is one thing. To knacker up the English language is going some.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

18 comments

  1. Virender Sehwag decided not to get 300 this time having read this post. He just likes to be difficult.

  2. What I can say is that when his skipper has won the toss and India have fielded, or when they have lost the toss and been sent in, which are both indicators that it is a bowler’s pitch, his average dips to 29.2. Sachin in the same situations averages over 51.

  3. So Shewag’s average is just over 50. Does anyone know what his average is outside of India? Or his home series average for that matter.

  4. Fine. He’s very good then. I was going to beat him with the usual ‘Indian pitches are shit’ stick.

    I’ll shut up now and not bother.

  5. Bobby: If a batsman didn’t do worse on a bowlers pitch, it wouldn’t be much of a bowlers pitch, would it? Sure, its a lot of runs he has dropped, especially compared to Tendulkar, but Sehwag is an opener, and facing the new ball on a bowlers pitch is definitely not easy.

  6. The ‘201 not out on a shitty pitch’ was one of the finest examples of one batsman coping where others failed.

  7. Bobby: that picks out just 9 tests of his 72. It’s almost certain that for any batsman, there are some criteria on which you can pick out a fraction of his Tests that look bad, so it’s not really supportable to bandy about stats like that and imply they prove someone is a flat track bully.

    Moreover, 9 Tests? Not a great indicator. After all, none of us thought Mike Hussey was Bradman reincarnate after his first 10 Tests, and that involved no cherry-picking.

  8. I got up at 4.00 this morning to watch that little dipshit fail to get to 300. You wouldn’t see me getting out in the 290s, I assure you.

  9. @ Ged Ladd
    I was up at 4 am too. First in the line before the ticket counter at Brebourne. With a crowd of at least 100 behind me. We DESERVED at least a 400 from Sehwag. But does the bastard care? Nooooo. He probably doesn’t even know I exist.

  10. He is a bastard. The whole country knows who his mother is but his dad? Nobody knows.

    (sorry)

  11. To be honest, chowsker, I didn’t even know you exist.

    Until now.

    We readers of King Cricket now all know you exist.

    Surely that’s what matters?

    And the fact that I had to get up around 4.00ish anyway to catch an unfeasibly early train to an even less feasible place is neither here nor there. We’ve been badly let down.

  12. BTW, I hope I can now call you “Ged” instead of your full name, since we seem to have struck up a friendship here…

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