Virender Sehwag says if yo-yo test existed during his time, Tendulkar, Ganguly wouldn’t make it to the team

The last few years saw major fitness changes in the Indian cricket team. It was not only about getting an effective delivery or being excellent with the bat rather the qualities that comprised a player should have fitness as top most preference.

It could be gathered from a very famous quote of former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni–a good fielder will always be an asset for the team even if he does not deliver from his specialization.

The requirements changed when teams like South Africa and Australia started setting benchmarks when it came to fitness. MS Dhoni, who is often credited for selecting the players based on their fitness, stressed on the importance of a good fielder and hinted in 2011 that it might be the time that they sea off two three players from the team.

Experts and media jumped on the opportunity to extract more and came to the conclusion that he was talking about Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Saurav Ganguly. This very issue again came into highlight as Sehwag was recently sharing his opinion on the selection of cricketers.

The explosive batsman said that if the fitness requirement was as strict as the current one and something like a yo-yo test existed in their times, Ganguly, Tendular and Laxman would not even make it to the team.

He further added that “these cricketers often missed the desired mark of 12.5 in the beep test, a test that was conducted during their times. He talked about it when a user asked him about the number one criteria of fitness. I want to tell you one thing, here we are talking about yo-yo Test, Hardik Pandya doesn’t have issues with running, he has issues with workload because of his bowling,” he added.

He talked to Cricbuzz while revealing the minutes of the selection process and said that Hardik Pandya was selected above Ashwin and Varun Chakravarthy as they have failed to clear the yo-yo test. Discussion about this started when one of the users pointed out that if Hardik Pandya was unfit to ball then why was he in the team and why Chakravarthy did not get a chance.

However, clarifying the details, he also added that he did not think on the same lines. On a different platform, the Indian skipper Virat Kohli had spoken about the importance of fitness in the game and stressed that fitness tests are extremely crucial. Sehwag on the other hand has different opinions about it. He feels that fitness is something that can be enhanced over time.