Last Updated: June 03, 2023, 7:26 PM IST
Virender Sehwag with Team India at the 2007 Cricket World Cup (AFP)
Virender Sehwag said that he locked himself in his hotel room after India crashed in the group stage of the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Virender Sehwag in a recent interview recalled how he locked himself in his hotel room after India were disappointingly knocked out of the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
The Indin men’s cricket team suffered a shocking loss to Bangladesh in the tournament opener, bouncing back with a commanding win over Bermuda but another loss to Sri Lanka mean a group-stage exit.
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“The 2007 World Cup hurt more. Because our team in 2007 was the best team in the world. If you were to look for a better team on paper, you wouldn’t find it before or after the World Cup. In the previous edition, we played the final, in the next edition, we won the World Cup, but it was not this team. So this hurt the most as we lost 2 out of our 3 matches. And we got knocked out,” Sehwag told Gaurav Kapur on the YouTube show ‘Breakfast with Champions’.
“You know what hurt more, everyone felt India will go to the next round, and then when the league stage ended, there was a 2-day break. And then we had to travel. But since we lost, we did not have tickets. And we had to wait 2 more days in Trinidad and Tobago. We had no work, no practice, nothing to be done.
“I didn’t have any room-service people in my room, didn’t call for housekeeping. Neither did I step out of my room. I had a friend in America, from whom I got ‘Prison Break’. I watched the show for the entire 2 days. The next two days, I watched it and completed it. I did not see anyone’s face,” he added.
In the very next edition, India went on to lift the title at home in 2011. Sehwag credited Gary Kirsten for pushing the team to treat every ODI as a knockout since he took over in 2008.
“In the 2011 World Cup, everybody was telling us to win the World Cup, everyone, from the waiter at the hotel to people in the airport. There was so much expectations and so much pressure also. The credit goes to Gary Kirsten,” Sehwag said.
“From the time he joined in 2008 to the 2011 World Cup final, he asked us to treat every one-day match we played like a knockout game. When the World Cup came, our mindset was such. We played the quarter-final, and then we did not feel like it was a knockout game,” Sehwag added.
