PTI
 
Dhaka, May 14: Expressing concern over the prolonged dry spell from Virender Sehwag's blade, Indian captain Rahul Dravid on Monday said the team expected the Delhi batsman to come up with bigger knocks.

"Definitely for someone of Sehwag's calibre, we truly do believe that he should go all the way and play bigger innings," David answered when asked whether the absence of a big innings from Sehwag was a cause for concern.

Dravid pointed out that the opening batsman was getting the starts but not building upon them.

"He is getting starts and he is not carrying on. That is definitely something we know that Sehwag should do. Sehwag himself knows that he must start converting those starts into meaningful contributions for the team."

After scoring 95 against West Indies at Port of Spain in May last year, Sehwag has managed to post only one century and a 50 in his last 18 innings. During this time, he has aggregated 440 runs at an average of 24.44.

His sequence of scores since the Port of Spain knock has been 9, 8, 1, 10, 9, 17, 65 (against Australia), 0, 18, 11,19, 12, 46, 2, 114 (against Bermuda), 48, 30 and 21, the last two scores coming up in the ongoing series against Bangladesh.

Despite his poor run over a long period, it was at Dravid's insistence that Sehwag was included in the World Cup squad, chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar had revealed later.

Incidentally, when the issue of Sehwag's form was brought up after the second match of the ongoing series, Dravid had said "people have roles. Everyone in the top order has a role to play. The top order has to go out and hit, and in the process they can lose wickets. We have to accept that.”