Lahore, May 9: Former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif has lavished praise on Virender Sehwag, saying the former Indian opener was a fearless cricketer who had a great influence in the team.
"He used to play to dominate. We are used to openers who were a bit circumspect at the beginning, gauging how the pitch is, who the bowler is whether (Glenn) McGrath, Brett Lee, Wasim Akram or Shoaib Akhtar,"Latif said in a Youtube show called 'Caught Behind'.
"But Sehwag was someone who feared none. He was an impactful player, had a great influence in his team and players like him succeed in world cricket," he added.
Latif, who played 37 Tests and 166 ODIs for Pakistan, further said that contrary to popular belief that Sehwag did not have a good foot movement, the former Indian opener had a unique technique which helped him dominate the bowlers.
"It's wrong to say his feet didn't move. He had unique technique with a very strong base. He was superb on the backfoot, used to cut, pull, hook with ease," said Latif.
"He had beautiful balance. People say that he had limited feet movement but that was perhaps the reason why he was so successful. And coaches nowadays have started to say that keep your balance with minimum foot movement," he added.
Sehwag represented India in 104 Tests, 251 ODIs and 19 T20Is in which he scored 8586, 8273 and 394 runs respectively.
According to Latif, Sehwag played with batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid and remained under their shadow.
"He played with Sachin, played with Rahul and remained under their shadow. If he was playing for any other country then he would've easily crossed 10 thousand runs, only one and a half thousand runs were remaining," said Latif.
"Maybe his team had bigger names, bigger players but opponents were always wary of the impact that Sehwag could have on a game," he added.