Sehwag allays fitness concerns

Trying to get clues from India’s net sessions is a hard task. First things first though. If there was even an iota of doubt over Virender Sehwag’s fitness, they were quickly dispelled as the right-hander had a lengthy bat at the ‘nets’ for the first time in four days.

The last time Sehwag had a bat, he was struck on his right wrist that forced him to cut short his practice last Friday at the P Sara Oval. With MS Dhoni resting Sehwag for the game against England and the batsman staying away from action in the subsequent trainings, rumours swung between injury and a potential exclusion of the Delhiite from the playing 11 in the Super Eights. On Wednesday, at the P Sara again, Sehwag was back in action opening the day’s proceedings along with Yuvraj Singh with whom he would possibly fighting for place in final 11 should India stick to five-bowler policy.

As Sehwag and Yuvraj trained in the main nets, Suresh Raina and later Gautam Gambhir had fielding coach Trevor Penney send them throw downs at the ‘nets’ off the main ground.

Dhoni and Virat Kohli too had decent hits while Rohit Sharma was tested by Zaheer Khan.

The under-fire paceman had a long bowl on Tuesday and on the day the left-arm paceman had two stints and he went full tilt in the second. Working up good pace and banging in short deliveries, he harried Rohit for a while before the Mumbai batsman got his rhythm back with authoritative pulls and neatly executed drives.