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Cricket Players‘The greatest Indian Test opener after Gavaskar and Sehwag but he is not celebrated enough’: Ashwin on Murali Vijay
Ravichandran Ashwin, who has played a lot of cricket with Vijay for Tamil Nadu and then for India, rates the recently-retired cricketer highly and for all the right reasons. Ashwin considers Vijay as the best Indian Test opener after the great Sunil Gavaskar and Virender Sehwag.
Sanjay Manjrekar coped with a lot of criticism - even Murali Vijay himself did not shy away from taking a jibe - when he expressed his surprise at seeing the former opener at the top of the list of Indian batters with the best conversation rate from fifty to hundred in home Tests. Vijay had an immaculate 60% conversation rate in home Tests. In other words, he crossed the 50-run mark 15 times in Test matches played in India and made sure to convert nine of those into centuries. His conversation rate was better than Mohammed Azharuddin, Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma. Manjrekar sure could not have been the only one taken aback by this stat. It would be interesting to know how many would have even remembered Vijay's name before thinking about the Tendulkars, Dravids, Gavaskars, Rohits and Kohlis when such a question is asked.
But this is not about Manjrekar. This is about Vijay. The man and also the cricketer. When Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir's opening combination came to a premature end in Test cricket, India were in desperate need of solidity at the top of the order. Openers, historically, have never been India's strongest point. Vijay put his hand up and made the spot his own.
His Test career did not get off to a flying start - the right-hander did not play a Test for 13 months since making his debut in 2008 - but he was always there as the backup. It was from 2013, that he started to rise as the first-choice opener. And till 2018 he was not only India's but also among the best Test openers in the world.
Ravichandran Ashwin, who has played a lot of cricket with Vijay for Tamil Nadu and then for India, rates the recently-retired cricketer highly and for all the right reasons. Ashwin considers Vijay as the best Indian Test opener after the great Sunil Gavaskar and Virender Sehwag. "M Vijay, according to me, is the greatest opener for India outside of Sunil Gavaskar and Virender Sehwag," Ashwin wrote for ESPNCricinfo.
It is hard to argue with that. Vijay is the only Indian cricketer to have registered more than 10 centuries while opening the batting in Test matches after Gavaskar (33) and Sehwag (22). 11 out of Vijay's 12 Test centuries came between 2013 to 2018.
But do we give enough credit to Vijay, the Test opener? Ashwin certainly doesn't think so and he compared Vijay with another stalwart but seldom recognised or at least not the way he should be, Cheteshwar Pujara.
"Vijay and Puji are quite similar in that they haven't been celebrated enough. They also had some of the most hilarious arguments. They used to do the most difficult job in Test cricket - play out the new ball in testing conditions, as we tend to need to do whenever we go abroad - so it is par for the course to have a few eccentricities emerge from that kind of partnership.
"They could spend a whole session break arguing over a call that Puji wouldn't have responded to. Vijay would try to get others to back him, but Puji would stay firm and say, "There was no run." You can get witnesses and evidence and attorneys, but Puji never changes his mind. Nor does he get frustrated with these debates," Ashwin said.
