5 reasons why Virender Sehwag is India's greatest Test opener

#2 Tackling swing or removing the shine off the ball

Second Test: India v England - Day Five

Virender Sehwag redefined the opener's role in the longest format of the game. Instead of wasting time on the crease, he used to hit the new ball all over the park to remove the shine from the ball.

There was an incident when Sehwag smashed Razzaq's reverse swing delivery for a huge six that forced umpires to pick another ball that would not reverse straight away. In a county championship, Jerome Snape complained Sehwag about reverse swing.

In the very next over, Sehwag hit the ball outside the park and said, "The ball won't reverse now and we are safe for the next one hour."

#1 Statistics

First Test - India v South Africa: Day 3

If you look even at stats, Virender Sehwag is India's greatest ever Test opener. During his Test career, he has scored 8586 runs in 104 games at an excellent average of 49.34.

He has a strike-rate of more than 80 in the Tests which is most by any player who has scored more than 2000 runs in Tests. Another former Indian opener, Sunil Gavaskar has scored more than 10000 runs Test cricket but he failed in the category - who could smash the balls from the very first over.

Sehwag has also scored 23 hundreds which included 11 consecutive 150's in Tests. He became the first Indian to score 300 runs in an innings in 2004 and registered another triple-century in 2008.