Opening was a special skill once upon a time.
Test openers seemed to come from one of two groups.
There were stoic chaps who were picked on and beaten as children.
This made them tough. Players like Boycott, Gavaskar, Langer, and other nuggetty sods that would happily take balls on the chest for hours on end to protect their wicket.
There has also been devil may care openers like Trumper, Slater, the One true god Sehwag.
These guys decided that blunting the new ball meant hitting it as hard as they could as often as they could.
But both of these types were proper openers.
To be a successful opening batsman it needed to be in your blood. You had to be a sick fucker to go out and face the fastest and scariest bowlers.
Very few middle order batsmen ever had the testicular power to move themselves up the order.
Today you don’t need balls to open the batting, anyone can do it.
I thought Shane Watson was the end of opening batsmen.
But Dilshan’s promotion was just taking the piss.
Before this test Dilshan had never batted at 3, and had batted at 4 twice.
Then he opens up, and he plays a 2020 innings to get the series starting.
Now I love attacking opening batsman, but Dilshan looks as much like an opening test batsman as my last shit does.
You just don’t need to be an opening batsman anymore.
Just a batsman.
If you can bat at 7, you can open.
Call it the Irfan Pathan Rule, mention the Krab Katich’s technique, watch Shane Watson look comfortable facing the first ball, or just refer people to Dilshan’s 92 off 72.
As an opener who used to wear a lot of deliveries, I am appalled…
I’m sorry, Uncle J, but I don’t see the reasoning behind this post. You were always reasonable despite your outrageous way of seeing things, but here I don’t see it.
Let’s see, what did he do y’day different from Sehwag that made him look worse than your shit? I watched the innings – there wasn’t a single ugly heave that T20 cricket always produce. Instead there were proper drives – outrageous ones – pulls and cuts from ball one, despite SL being 16/2, and it worked as it should have. No prodding outside the off stump – he either hit them or left them. It was an innings worth watching as far as I can see. Of course the bowling was shit, and pitch was good to bat on, but how many proper openers have fucked up things against weaker attacks on better pitches?
I’m sorry but this post doesn’t make any sense to me.
Sach, I doubt he did anything that different, but the way he was picked is what is different. He was picked from the middle order, like Watson, Katich and Pathan. Selectors no longer believe opening positions are just for specialist opening batsman. They are now just picking batsman who don’t even resemble openers. Sehwag may throw the bat around, but he is also a sound opening batsman. Dilshan seemed to be picked so Sri Lanka could pick an extra middle order batsman. Watson and Pathan were picked for extra bowling options, and katich was picked because the selectors needed him in the side.
ha! calling Hauritz the frontline spinner was headlines! or picking Mc Donald ahead of Symonds. This aussie side can do anything..
The only way to separate the openers from the shit is to bring back the frighteningly fast bowlers.
I don’t care where you find them, clone them, give them phosphor bronze joints or whatever, just make every good team have at least two fast bowlers who will take a new ball and not think twice about sending it down at 90 mph into the nose of the guy at the other end..
I agree that openers are a special breed, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a middle order batsman cannot fit in. Maybe Dilshan has it in him to succeed. It is too early to tell, but maybe – just maybe – he might fit in perfectly.
Remember Langer, just an experiment that worked out perfectly.
And actually he was promoted for two reasons – one SL don’t have a proper opening batsman in their squad and two they wanted to bring in PJ, the only specialist keeper going around at this time in world cricket.
JRod – do you think world cricket has lost the specialist opening batsman category because of the drop in standards of fast bowlers or becuase these days, bowlers also can bat (unlike Courtney Walsh and Ambrose who could not even hold the bat), and so the standards of batting have improved making it possible for an allrounder like pathan to be good enough to open the batting?
Anon, Flat Pitches, less skilled bowlers, and Tony Greig are to blame.
Adverbin, Langer and Sehwag were both moved down the order, and others have been as well. But they have been moved down the order because something in their psyche suits opening. But the amount of middle order batsman moving down now suggests that this is a ever increasing trend.
I think it’s got something to do with the pitches to be honest.
Actually Sehwag was a hard hitting lower order bat picked in the Indian team as an allrounder bowling useful off-spin. He was asked to open in SA simply because the specialist openers failed to cope with Donald and co. He made 105 in his first match as opener and India found a world class opener!. Actually India are the worst culprits in this regard with middle order batsman picked to open quite frequently. Remember that Laxman, a middle order bat struggling to break into the Indian team which had a middle order of Dravid, Ganguly, Azharuddin, agreed to open, simply to get a regular place in the team. Despite his classy 167 in Australia, he was never a good opener. The emergence of Sehwag and the exit of Azhar enabled him to return to his position in the middle order.
Dilshan has atleast established himself as an opener in the limited overs format.
jrod is right . opening is a specialist job for people who can pile up double hundreds and triple hundreds. Not a job for guys like Shane watson who make 40-50 and get out.
I am with you on this one Jrod. We need the theatre.