Sehwag happy to bat in the middle order

Virender Sehwag said that he had no problems batting down the order in one-day matches as long as it served the interests of the team. "I started opening the batting because Sachin Tendulkar was not part of the team," Sehwag told the Times of India. "Now the team management has worked out a new strategy and I am sure we will gain from it.

"The team management feels that I can do the job in the middle since I play both pacers and spinners well. It's not a problem if I bat as an opener in Tests and in the middle order in one-dayers."

Out of a total 155 matches, Sehwag has opened the batting in 126 matches in which he averages 34.13. All his seven ODI hundreds have been scored in the opening slot.

"The team has reached a stage where we are all aware of our strengths and weaknesses. Understandably, our aim is to play good cricket here but the weather has spoilt the show," he said.

India lost their first match of the DLF Cup against West Indies by 29 runs after rain during the West Indies innings necessitated the enforcement of the Duckworth-Lewis rule. Their second match against Australia had to be abandoned because of rain.

Though rain shortened the match against West Indies, Sehwag was happy that the team had got to bat 50 overs, while in the match against Australia, he said that the Indian bowlers did a good job of restricting Australia to a chaseable total. On his own bowling performance in recent matches, Sehwag said that he was really enjoying turning his arm over. "During the Test series against West Indies, I bowled around 10-12 overs each day. This helped." He added that he bowled as much as he could during the practice sessions.