The great Virender Sehwag debuted for India in 1999 and by the time he finished his career 15 years later in 2014, he ended up playing with a plethora of cricketers. By opening the batting alongside his idol Sachin Tendulkar to being captained by MS Dhoni and stitching partnerships with Virat Kohli, Sehwag had the opportunity to share the dressing room with some of the finest players Indian cricket had to offer. Outside of the Indian team, Sehwag even shared the dressing room with some world-class international athletes in the Indian Premier League, from the time he captained the Delhi Capitals (formerly the Daredevils) till he played his final season with Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab) in 2015. (Also Read: David Warner gives epic response to Shane Watson’s ‘ex-captain of Sunrisers Hyderabad’ introduction)
Sehwag recalled an interesting story from his time as Delhi Capitals captain back in 2009, the second edition of the IPL. Sehwag narrated an anecdote about David Warner, who was playing his first IPL season, but as the former India batter puts it, was struggling with discipline. Sehwag mentioned how Warner was not easy to manage back in the day and because he was involved in a couple of dressing room incidents that Sehwag and the rest of the management were forced to send him back home.
“I too have vented out my frustrations on a couple of players and David Warner was one of them. Because when he had joined newly, he partied more than believing in practice or playing matches. In the first year, he had a fight with a few players so we sent him back for the last two matches. So sometimes it happens that you keep someone out to teach them a lesson. He was new so it was important to show him that you alone are not important for the team, others are too. There are other players who can play and win the match for the team too. And that’s what happened. We kept him out of the team and won as well,” Sehwag revealed while speaking on Cricbuzz.
The discussion began when the topic of Warner was touched upon prior to the start of the Delhi Capitals vs Sunrisers Hyderabad IPL match on Thursday. Last year, Warner was controversially stripped of captaincy after giving years of service to the franchise – including an IPL title win in 2016 – and later dropped from the team. Warner was eventually released by the franchise before he was picked up by Delhi at the IPL mega auction in February for ₹6.5 crore. And the result has been an impressive tally of 356 runs from eight matches, including four half-centuries and a fourth place in the list of the tournament’s leading run-getters.
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