The rules of the MCL, which is scheduled to begin in January, state that players taking part must have retired from all international formats. On Monday, while reminded of this stipulation at an MCL event in Dubai, Sehwag said he would retire in order to play the tournament
AGENCIES
NEW DELHI
Virender Sehwag has indicated that he will retire from international cricket in order to take part in the Masters Champions League (MCL), a UAE-based Twenty20 tournament.
The rules of the MCL, which is scheduled to begin in January, state that players taking part must have retired from all international formats. On Monday, while reminded of this stipulation at an MCL event in Dubai, Sehwag said he would retire in order to play the tournament. The MCL, scheduled to start in January 2016, is due to feature a number of retired international greats.
Before his matter-of-fact statement, Sehwag had been captaining Haryana in the Ranji Trophy, and had scored two half-centuries in their first two matches of the season. He will be joining his Haryana team-mates in Mysore on October 21, and the Haryana Cricket Association secretary Anirudh Chaudhry has indicated Sehwag will play the rest of the season for the team.
On Monday, the homepage of the tournament's website sported an image of eight players lined up side-by-side, seen from the back. On the backs of seven T-shirts were the names 'Sangakkara', 'Gilchrist', 'Sehwag', 'Lara', 'Wasim', 'Kallis' and 'Mahela', with a question mark on the back of the eighth T-shirt. The MCL event did not declare names of the franchise teams that will be competing in the event.
Sehwag, 36, is widely considered one of India's greatest opening batsmen, and revolutionised the art of batting against the new ball in Test cricket with his aggressive approach, scoring at a strike rate of over 80 in the longest format. Sehwag has been out of India's plans for over two years, having last played for the national side in the Hyderabad Test against Australia in March 2013.
Sehwag played 104 Tests, 251 ODIs and 19 T20Is, scoring over 17,000 international runs and picking up 136 wickets with his offspin. His greatest moments came in Test cricket, where he made 23 hundreds including the only two triple-centuries by any Indian batsman, while his ODI achievements included the format's second double-hundred.
