The Quest For A Stable Opening Pair Remains Unconquered.

Can you guess which batting positions in the Indian line up find a new face most frequently? Well, the answer is most educed from the fact that more than ten opening pairs have been gambled with in the past six years. What is more intricate about the above fact is that, many youngsters were axed before they could even dream of establishing themselves in the international arena. The selectors have never given a sophist thought in managing the young opener’s tenure at the field. You may consider the case of Bengal opener Devang Gandhi who was given a break on the fearful bouncy Australian pitches against the likes of Glen McGrath and Bret Lee. His failure was as expected as his inclusion in the team. Never had the selectors provided him the practice to play on those lively pitches, but his performance on them destined his association with the Indian team. Devang Gandhi is just one among the huge test discard group victimized by the inadvertent policy of the selectors. The list further includes the flamboyant Mumbai opener Wasim Jaffer, talented Rajasthan opener Gagan Khoda and a few others. If this was not enough, the selectors have tried to create openers by a make shift operation. The victims here are Hyderabadi Venkata Laxman who still would be better off in the middle order, Rahul Dravid who was thankfully sent back to his deserving number 3 position and others like Nayan Mongia, Sameer Dighe and in the past Ravi Shastri, Dilip Vengsarkar. Among all the make shift openers only Ravi Shastri was able to hold his position by getting some runs, while others performed miserably at foreign soil. The strategy did work at home, but was the major cause behind India putting a shameful show in non-subcontinental pitches in the recent years on test cricket. A solid middle order is the backbone of any cricket team but its exposure at the right time is guided by the openers. This is the difference between the current Indian team with the strongest middle order in Sachin, Saurav and Rahul finding it hard to win a single test abroad and Kapil Dev’s team with stalwarts like Sunil Gavaskar, Chetan Chauhan or Krishnamachari Srikant at the top with average middle order achieving atleast satisfactory success. The grandeur of Sunil Gavaskar in international cricket is phenomenal considering the fact that he was brought up on docile subcontinent pitches. Among the many partners who opened with Gavaskar, only Chetan Chauhan, Krish Srikanth and Navjot Sidhu have scored more than 2000 test runs. It is ver evident form these statistics that an opener’s job is a specialist job. An opener has to be mentally very and with a sound adaptive technique. He must bat with utmost concentration, as he has to face the sheer pace of the new hard swinging ball. He has to stand like a wall protecting the middle order on lively pitches. A good opening stand always lifts the morale of the entire team.

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