‘Play fearless, give your best’: Virender Sehwag asks Team India to not think about results

ICC World Cup 2023 India vs New Zealand: Newest inductee in International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Hall of Fame and batter extraordinaire, Virender Sehwag, gave some sane advice to the Men in Blue ahead of the ICC World Cup 2023’s first semi-final between India-New Zealand. Sehwag also lauded skipper Rohit Sharma’s captaincy style, and acknowledged the role of Lady Luck in winning matches. India has won all the matches in the group stage, with nine consecutive wins, to bag the top-most rank in the scoretable.

On the eve of the Ind vs NZ semi-final match, Sehwag advised the team: “Play fearless and give your best. Don’t think about the results. If eleven players give their best, they will win.” He also said that Rohit Sharma has taken a lot of responsibilities and gives a good start to the team by scoring a bunch of runs early in the game, as mentioned in a report in Hindustan Times.

“He’s been batting freely for a while. But now that he is the captain, he is taking more responsibility to get good starts and score a lot of runs. It’s also amazing how he is taking care of Shubman Gill,” said Sehwag. Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill are the openers for India.

The former opener also said that apart from a good game, “a bit of luck” is also important in the knock-out games. “This Indian team is definitely playing good cricket. Thoda luck bhi mil gaya to sone pe suhaga hoga (A little luck will be the cherry on top),” he said.

Sehwag, highlighting the importance of playing a bit differently than the rest, said that the Indian team is winning because of the bowlers.

Virender Sehwag played for India between 1999 and 2013, and had scored a total of 23 Test centuries. He accumulated 8,586 runs from 104 Tests at an average of 49.34 and also took 40 wickets.

Sehwag said that not only Sourav Ganguly, the idea to make him an opener came from Zaheer Khan. "Everybody thinks it was Sourav Ganguly that thought of making him open the innings but it was Zaheer (Khan), who came up with that suggestion first. He told Ganguly to make me open the innings," said Sehwag.

The first semi-final match of the ICC World Cup 2023 will take place at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The toss will take place at 1:30pm and the match will commence at 2pm.

Also read: ICC World Cup 2023 India vs New Zealand: Here's how India fared in previous semi-finals

Also read: IND vs NZ World Cup 2023 semi final: When and where to watch, venue, squads, key players, head-to-head records, win probability, pitch report, weather prediction