Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag: Is it game over for the duo?

The old firm need to up their game to have any hopes of getting back into the national side.

Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir can now be claimed as former Indian openers because currently their success seems to be overshadowed by new young openers of the Indian team: Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma.

Gambhir and Sehwag, who probably were one of the best cricketers of the Indian team, have lost out in recent times due to fitness and poor form. Both men who have had amazing records and achievements to their name have not played and not even featured for the Indian team since December 2012 in Tests and since January 2013 in ODIs.

With both players aged above 30, it looks like making a comeback in the squad, especially the ODI squad, remains a distant dream for both now as the younger lot has been performing well.

Let us take a brief look at the records of both players:

• Virender Sehwag: A former ICC Test Player of the Year, he has two triple centuries to his name in Test matches; the highest ODI score of 219 in the world; member of the 2007 T20 World Cup-winning side and also the 2011 ODI World Cup-winning side.
• Gautam Gambhir: A former ICC Test Player of the Year, he was the member of 2007 T20 World Cup-winning side and also a prolific member of 2011 ODI World Cup-winning side. His knock in the final of 2011 World Cup against Sri-Lanka was one of the reasons for India’s victory. He has been cited as an excellent performer in all forms of cricket (a rare case) by past exponents of the game.

Fitness and dip in form may have played spoilsport with these highly capable and popular players, but they need to work very hard on their fitness and game to make a comeback into the Indian squad.

Recently, both were excluded from the Indian team for the Zimbabwe tour. Gambhir despite having regained fitness was not considered and Sehwag still has fitness issues. Gambhir was also not included in the India A squad going to South Africa.

Indian cricket fans really want this winning phase of the Indian team to go on but they surely want these highly capable players back into the team.