RELIABLE: Virender Sehwag has done well as an opener. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

Bangalore: Virender Sehwag often stirs up the fire atop the order. Surprisingly for a batsman who was converted into an opener as the middle-order sported a `no-vacancy' board, he has acquitted himself to the job very well.

An overall record of 4,066 Test runs and 4,608 runs in one-day internationals does testify to the fact that Sehwag has taken the opener's role in his stride.

However of late, skipper Rahul Dravid has dabbled with the opening slot with great success in one-dayers and add to that the return of Sachin Tendulkar and the floater-role played by both M.S. Dhoni and Irfan Pathan, you do have a plethora of choices.

Sehwag is aware of the changed dynamics as the team gears up for more experiments in the run-up to the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.

`Depends on situation'

"It depends upon situations and conditions. We are playing in Malaysia in a couple of weeks and may be our combination will change. I am prepared to bat in any position," Sehwag said during the course of the cricket-skills camp here.

"But there will be times when you have to change the batting-order, which will only help improve the team's performance and we have seen that in some of the previous matches. As I said earlier it all depends upon situations. If we are chasing a target of 300-plus, we will have a particular pair opening or a particular player coming in at No.3. Likewise, we can have different players opening if we are batting first," Sehwag added.

Sometimes, Sehwag's run-flow suffers a blip and the inevitable bad-form queries follow.

Sehwag admitted that he has to improve his consistency. "I have to perform consistently. I have played seven years of international cricket and I have to play consistently well in both Tests and one-dayers. I have discussed this issue with Greg Chappell, like how I can perform consistently apart from some other issues," Sehwag said.

On the current camp, Sehwag said: "Yesterday, both Chappell and Dravid met each player individually and asked us about our goals and how we think we can improve our team. In this camp, there is stress on eliciting opinion from individual players.

"We will seek ideas from everybody and implement them in practice matches in Chennai. What happens in most cases is that only coach and captain discuss, but one has to realise that other players too will have good ideas and to that end this camp will be useful. We are training here not just with the Malaysian tri-series in mind. We are also preparing for the World Cup. "

Benefits

In the current camp, the bowling machines have been mounted at heights higher than normal and Sehwag mentioned the benefits of such a move.

"Bowlers like Harmison and McGrath are tall and when they bowl the ball comes from more than the normal height. So we had set the machines suiting that angle and height and it helped," Sehwag said.

`Working on bowling'

Sehwag, who has also bagged 69 wickets in one-dayers and 12 in Tests, is keen to improve his off-spin skills.

"I am working on my bowling. We don't have a good fifth bowler and if Yuvraj, Sachin and myself together can do that job, it's good for the team," Sehwag said.

Meanwhile at the camp, the players had batting sessions, squaring up to Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar and seven State junior bowlers besides the two bowling machines. Later Sehwag, Yuvraj and Mohammed Kaif joined Pathan and Agarkar for fielding drills that were followed by a fresh session of running skills and agility exercises in the afternoon.

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