Rave reviews
During the trip Down Under, former Aussie captain Ian Chappell had been impressed by the boy with a perfect left-elbow position and had speculated that Sharma would one day be the obvious replacement for Tendulkar at No. 4 in Tests. During the IPL, Sunil Gavaskar hasn’t been able to hide his excitement about the sighting of the next big Mumbai batsman.
With the youngster getting rave reviews from men who are tough to please, the logical question is: Can Sharma’s IPL high see him get elevated to the highest level in the near future? National selector Venkatpathy Raju is non-committal. “He is already there in the ODI squad. All I can say is that he is very talented and someone who has a lot of time to play his shots,” he says. Praveen Amre, who as a junior selector picked Sharma for the under-19 World Cup in 2006 and had a close view of the batsman at the senior level by the virtue of being the Mumbai Ranji coach, has no doubt that Sharma’s style is suitable for the longest version too. “He is someone like Virender Sehwag or Andrew Symonds. Because of their attacking style, initially there is a question mark over their adaptability in Tests. But look at the way Sehwag and Symonds have scored so heavily in the longer version. The only thing that Sharma has to take care of is shot selection. Once that is sorted out, I don’t think there will be a problem,” says Amre.

... contd.