One of the all-time quickest bowlers, former Australia pacer Brett Lee, has been a part of several great rivalries throughout his career. Many players, including Virat Kohli, Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Virender Sehwag, and Sachin Tendulkar, had faced Lee and knew they were in for a challenge.
While Lee has always regarded Tendulkar as the toughest batter he has ever faced, there is another Indian player he holds in high regard: Sachin’s ODI opening partner, Virender Sehwag.
Virender Sehwag Was A Swashbuckling Batter: Brett Lee
“You think of the word cruel. You think of the word swashbuckling. Think of the world as unpredictable, I think of none other than Virender Sehwag. He played with a smile on his face, with intent… the type of guy that would quite likely want to hit the first ball of a Test match for six… and he has done it. He is a guy that is so hard to bowl to because as I mentioned, of the unpredictability.
You would bowl that beautiful line and length thinking I’ve got him… ball shaping away. And that big smile, Sehwag would go BANG, hit you over cover for six,” Lee said on his YouTube channel ‘Brett Lee TV’.
“The guy that looked a little bit like Sachin Tendulkar when he was batting. And I thought ‘here we go again. Another Sachin Tendulkar. If one wasn’t enough, we’ve got another one and he is opening the batting’. We in the Australian team had a ploy for Sehwag and even start the Test match with a third man, trying to suck him in to hit one down there. We tried that in an ODI match one day and he wacked it… absolutely nailed it out of the ground.
I just thought ‘this guy is too good’. And he would give you that cheeky little wink. The best thing about Sehwag was that he was a character. He loved playing cricket and those little battle scars against the bowler. He got the ability to make people get hooked on to seats,” added Lee.