In the nineties; when one day cricket was at it’s pinnacle (both in terms of TRP ratings as well as crowd turn outs) there was an adage that the best batsman in the team should open the innings. We saw the emergence of middle order batsmen like Tendulkar and Ganguly forge a strong opening partnership for India in many one day matches. In reality; this trend started with Mark Greatbatch in the 1992 world cup and continued with Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana in the 1996 tournament. The Sri Lankan Captain at that time, Ranathunga even gave a test opening position to Jayasuriya. He scored a record breaking 340 in 1997 as an opener. This was an interesting choice by Ranathunga as he had two qualified openers in Mahanama and Attapattu at that time. Still, he slotted Mahanama in the middle order and gave Jayasuriya an elevation to open the innings. This was radical in that era as the job of an opening batsman was to see off the new ball for the other top order batsmen. The best batsman in the team was usually slotted at No 4 position. Even though Jayasuriya was successful as an opener in tests; he was more devastating as an opener in one day internationals. Hence, we can safely say that the decision of Saurav Ganguly to play Virender Sehwag as an opening batsman at Lords in 2002 as the beginning of a new era in test match cricket. The trend continued with other teams. Justin Langer was promoted to open the innings for Australia. Today, the Australian openers are two middle order batsmen. Srilanka had Dilshan opening and Brendon McCullum is pondering on opening the innings after giving up the gloves in test match cricket. So, all these changes beg a question... Should a team play the best six batsmen in their country for test match cricket or positions should be given to specialists. Not all experiments were successful the case in point being the promotion of Yuvaraj Singh to open the innings against Australia in 2004. However, going by the current scenario in International cricket; one can safely say that the best six batsmen in the team are taking the field. So, Cricinfo might have to rethink on the All Time XI of different test playing countries.
Well, cant stop saying this cos I was a great fan of Srkanth (krish). It was him who started thrashing all the bowlers from ball one. I was expecting his name somewhere in this blog. Anyways, otherwise the blog was really good and had a lot of facts. It is really hard to write when lots of facts involved. I hardly do that. :P
ReplyDeleteThe difference was Kris Srikanth was a specialist opening batsman. But, he also redefined the job of an opening batsmen by blazing at the top of the order. The same can be said about Navjot Singh Sidhu also. However, in the modern era; middle order batsmen who can't fit in the side are opening the innings (and successfully too). The examples that I have quoted are all middle order batsmen turning in to openers.
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