Former India cricketer Virender Sehwag scored tonnes of runs against spinners in his cricketing career. However, against Muttiah Muralidaran, the opener found difficulty in understanding his action and thus, he struggled to score against the former Sri Lanka international.
Speaking about the rivalry, Sehwag stated he was never afraid of getting out to Shane Warne, Shoaib Akhtar or any bowler but lived under the same fear while facing Muralidaran.
The 44-year-old also mentioned that it took him seven years to learn how to tackle the off-spinner. He however jokingly said that his ego used to get hurt when Muralitharan would get the better of him but he was never afraid to go all-out against the spin wizard.
“The only bowler I was afraid of getting out was Muttiah Muralitharan. Everyone thought that it will be Shane Warne or Shoaib Akhtar or Brett Lee or Glenn McGrath but against them, I was never afraid of getting out. I was afraid of getting hit on my body or on my helmet. Against McGrath, it was like, we can’t score runs against him, that’s all.
“However, against Muralitharan, I was afraid. I didn’t know how I will score runs against him as I was afraid of getting out. I used to struggle to pick his doosra,” Sehwag said in the latest episode of Breakfast With Champions.
Meanwhile, a couple of years back, Sehwag had revealed that he never used to consider off-spinners as real bowlers. India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin previously revealed the story of how the opener bashed Harbhajan Singh despite being sick and now talking about Muralitharan, Sehwag mentioned that he never used to consider the Sri Lankan spinner as a real bowler but was still scared of getting out to him.
“I never considered him as a bowler but I was scared. I used to try to hit him but unfortunately, I used to get out. My ego used to get hurt that how can an off-spinner is not making me score runs. It took me a lot of years to learn how to tackle him,” Sehwag added. (Crictracker)