Virender Sehwag continued to aim barbs at his opposition during the press conference after India had beaten Bangladesh rather comfortably in the first Test match at Chittagong. He again said that the opposition was not good enough to pick up 20 wickets.
To start off with, he had rejected any questions that were related to his earlier press conference where he had been ultra-critical of the Bangladeshi cricketers and their inability to win Tests. When pestered about whether he thought he had been wrong in gauging the opposition and whether he thought that Bangladesh could pick up 20 wickets, Sehwag replied back, “No. They can’t. They still didn’t get 20 wickets.”
The Indian captain had declared the Indian innings with the side eight wickets down. He was then asked whether he had declared the innings in order to disallow the opposition from picking up twenty wickets, Sehwag said, “I had to declare because I wanted to win the game.”
Sehwag did say that the Bangladeshis bowled well in the first innings when the conditions supported their bowlers. However, he added that the Bangladeshi batting was not up to the mark while their own batting was good in the second innings of the game.
Sehwag also said that he was very impressed with the bowling of his quick bowlers and Amit Mishra. Ishant Sharma, he said, was the most impressive, while Zaheer Khan continued to use his experience well. He said, “Ishant bowled really well. It’s good for him and good for Indian cricket.”
Sehwag was also not worried about the first innings collapse and said that it happened with all teams. He also cited the example of the Aussie collapse at Sydney when they had managed only 120 odd before returning to beat Pakistan in the game. He added, “We managed to score 250 because of Sachin, but we did bat well in the second innings and our bowling did the job for us.”
In the end, when quizzed about his own form, Sehwag said that he was happy with it. Sehwag had come into the first game of the series against Bangladesh with a 290 to his name and scored a half century and a forty in the game.
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