Virender Sehwag

Nottingham: Edition No.2 of the Indian Premier League (IPL), which concluded just over a fortnight ago, has claimed an Indian casualty — Virender Sehwag.

The World T20 is over for the vice-captain, an impact-maker, and his brace-supported right shoulder may require surgery.

Sehwag has been replaced by Dinesh Karthik, who is capable of both opening and batting in the middle-order besides wearing the big gloves.

In other words, he gives options.

According to well-placed sources, the team management sent three names to the selectors back home and they preferred Karthik to Virat Kohli and Abhishek Nayar.

“The injury occurred during the IPL semi-final (against the Deccan Chargers)... I hurt myself while diving to bring off a stop,” Sehwag, who’d been captaining the Delhi DareDevils, told The Telegraph.

Perhaps because his family was around, Sehwag’s tone didn’t betray the acute disappointment he must be feeling.

Speaking at the Park Plaza on Tuesday afternoon, he added: “I’m not sure what’s to happen next... I’ll be consulting a specialist in London, where I’ll be heading to now (with wife and son)... There’s nothing that I can do.”

Sehwag, incidentally, didn’t play a single match on this trip to England.

Tuesday’s nets, ahead of Wednesday’s match against Ireland, had again been optional but Sehwag faced Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar for a dozen deliveries before coming away.

He seemed in discomfort.

Yuvraj Singh, one understands, will be named the vice-captain. It’s a position he held earlier, in ODIs and in T20.

The team management, of course, tried to mislead the media on the Sehwag issue.

While captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni maintained that one would have to wait for a “press release” from the Board, manager V. Chamundeshwarnath, after a row with the Fourth Estate, said a decision on Sehwag only would be taken some 24 hours later.

[The row, during a press conference, saw Dhoni take a comment rather personally when, actually, nobody accused him of anything.]

Within an hour, though, the Board announced that Sehwag would be replaced!

So much for transparency. And, who’ll believe that a media manager (the son of a former Board president) is part of the support staff?

Instead of always counting crores of rupees and millions of dollars, the Board should first have professionals in key positions.

Footnote: Till late in the day, the Board hadn’t applied to the World T20 technical committee for a formal clearance to replace Sehwag. Not that a problem will crop up, but it’s mandatory.