Blaming selectors for wrong doings is an age old practice in Indian cricket. More often than not, they deserve the stick. But like wicket-keeping, where you only get noticed if you drop a catch or fumble balls, if the selectors have taken an inspired decision, which helped dramatically transform the fortunes of the team they hardly get credit for it. Virender Sehwag?s inclusion in the team that toured Australia was one such. Out in the cold for a while and scoring almost nothing in domestic cricket, Sehwag was picked on reputation and past performance in December 2007. He was almost a living memory, who had been resuscitated from the dead for one final time. While the skipper had a major role in the picking, primary credit must go to Dilip Vengsarkar and company. Once picked, Sehwag, legends like Gavaskar were insistent, had to play. He wasn?t part of the Indian team for the first two Test matches at Melbourne and Sydney. India, for the record, lost both games. Once picked at Perth, he gave India the momentum the team needed and helped script the best ever victory on Australian soil. At the WACA, India had amassed 56 in the first hour courtesy Sehwag. The battle was finally on. What followed his all round heroics at Perth was a match saving hundred at Adelaide, labelled by many as the best match saving Test hundred by an Indian in recent times.

Sehwag, it must be acknowledged, remains the best bet Test cricket has against its new found adversaries, the IPL and ICL. Even as I am writing this piece at the end of the first days play at Hamilton, Sehwag is unbeaten on 22 of a mere 18 balls. The kind of aggression on view, the kind of impact on the crowd and the kind of ecstacy most of his innings leave us with will survive for years after Sehwag has left the stage. No 20-20 innings ever, except perhaps the six 6?s Yuvraj Singh hit in the world championship, can capture the nation?s imagination in a similar way. And that?s what makes Sehwag special. With ten straight 150 plus scores in his last ten century innings in Test cricket, he has set up 10 Test matches for India. Even in the recent world record run chase against England, it was Sehwag who set the game up with his blistering 82 on the fourth evening. In an hour, the tables had turned. He batted in a way in which only he can and in the process, allowed Tendulkar to silence his critics, once and for all.

If the innings against the English at Chepauk was surreal, he has gone a step further in New Zealand and has dwarfed all but Tendulkar. His strokes and they ease and panache with which they are executed makes cricket look the easiest ball game in the world. And once he gets out, the other batsman look to be playing on a minefield. Not many remember that Sehwag, amidst all the disaster and ruin in New Zealand the last time India had toured in 2002-03, had scored two three figure scores, the only batsman to do so. In fact, much more than his personal records, the way he bats will make sure Sehwag is remembered as a great who lived to entertain while taking up the cudgels for the games ultimate format, Test cricket.

Even at the cost of offending many a cricket aficionado I can?t help but make a realisation known here-that Sehwag is the best composite opening batsman India has ever produced. The kind of impact he has had on Test cricket, one day internationals and T-20 makes him a player unrivalled, one who deserves a lions share for propelling Indian cricket to the exalted status it enjoys in world cricket today.

The writer is a cricket historian