Prospective openers for test matches

[Sooda]

Just wondering who the younger back up openers are. Dhawan has not exactly seemed at home in International cricket by all accounts. Vijay and Mukund are the current resevre duo and both deserve a long rope. But if either one proves less than adequate- bearing in mind Sehwag is enerting his mid 30's now (personally I feel he should bat at no 5 going forward)-wonder who the next generation of Indian openers are. Personally I thought UPs Srivastava was going to be a cracking batsman but he has not quite carried on the form of a few years ago. Seems the selectors view Rahane as a no 3 or 4 though he can open. Then we are into D B Ravi Teja and Ravi Inder Singh territory. Aggarwal does not seem like a test bat at this point. Would it be someone coverted like Parthiv ? Or one of the middle order bats..Pujara? Dinesh Kartik has done well for us in the past... Having said all the above its not like most international sides have a plethora of batting talent knocking on the doors of current incumbents, and this is just relative to the options we seem to have in the middle order where the younger bats have shown at least glimpses of their quality in ODIs so it is reassuring... It weill be interesting to see who opens in the emerging players tourno

[rkt.india]

Tanmay Srivastava is still very young only 22...he needs one good season and he will be back in eyes of selectors and he has the ability to play long solid innings and is very good on back foot.

[kabira]

LOL we havent yet found permanent replacement for Ganguly and we are talking about openers..

[Cricket Tragic]

I was thinking about this yesterday. If Sehwag is out for the series, we are down to VJ and Mukund. VJ does not have the game right now to be successful overseas imo. Going forward, we need to identify a couple of good openers.

[Karan114]

Just wondering who the younger back up openers are. Dhawan has not exactly seemed at home in International cricket by all accounts. Vijay and Mukund are the current resevre duo and both deserve a long rope. But if either one proves less than adequate- bearing in mind Sehwag is enerting his mid 30's now (personally I feel he should bat at no 5 going forward)-wonder who the next generation of Indian openers are. Personally I thought UPs Srivastava was going to be a cracking batsman but he has not quite carried on the form of a few years ago. Seems the selectors view Rahane as a no 3 or 4 though he can open. Then we are into D B Ravi Teja and Ravi Inder Singh territory. Aggarwal does not seem like a test bat at this point.

To be fair Mukund is in the "young prospects" category right now. Vijay is more of a worry, as he is 27 and has been around for a while now. We'll have to see how these two get on in the chances they get. Sehwag will probably not shift down till a couple of years at least, and maybe by that point a young talent will have emerged. But to be honest, the most pressing concern right now is for one of the young batsmen to cement themselves at no.6 as the middle-order guys will be gone sooner than Veeru. We've seen glimpses but we need one of the guys to average 45+ with a couple of hundreds and make that spot their own.

[jairamesh]

someone who can even replicate 50% of sehwag's gameplay would be ideal. Give us that 4-5rpo start.

[saneindian]

Sarul Kanwar made a promising start to his first class career last season. Will be interesting to see how he develops. Mohnish Mishra had a very good season as an opener. But looks to be more in the Uthappa mode.

[cowboysfan]

Mukund seems like a good prospect,vj is a lost cause now.

[pensionplan]

Just wondering who the younger back up openers are. Dhawan has not exactly seemed at home in International cricket by all accounts. Vijay and Mukund are the current resevre duo and both deserve a long rope. But if either one proves less than adequate- bearing in mind Sehwag is enerting his mid 30's now (personally I feel he should bat at no 5 going forward)-wonder who the next generation of Indian openers are. Personally I thought UPs Srivastava was going to be a cracking batsman but he has not quite carried on the form of a few years ago. Seems the selectors view Rahane as a no 3 or 4 though he can open. Then we are into D B Ravi Teja and Ravi Inder Singh territory. Aggarwal does not seem like a test bat at this point. Would it be someone coverted like Parthiv ? Or one of the middle order bats..Pujara? Dinesh Kartik has done well for us in the past... Having said all the above its not like most international sides have a plethora of batting talent knocking on the doors of current incumbents, and this is just relative to the options we seem to have in the middle order where the younger bats have shown at least glimpses of their quality in ODIs so it is reassuring... It weill be interesting to see who opens in the emerging players tourno

Why not Kaif? Ofcourse he cannot put bat to ball on anything bowled over 116kmph but if we keep that minor detail aside we can consider his uselessness as well right about now. :-)

[pensionplan]

LOL we havent yet found permanent replacement for Ganguly and we are talking about openers..

Though that may have some validity statistically speaking ever since Ganguly left in 2008 India has rose to the No.1 team in the Test rankings for the first time ever and has stayed there now for a year. So thankfully we did not even miss a beat while at the same time giving opportunities to some of these young players eventually for one of Kohli, Pujara, Raina or Rohit to come good. Too much talent there to not find a replacement for a 42 career average player that Ganguly was.

[vvvslaxman]

India always had perennial problem with openers. Tried so many people. So far only Gauti and Viru stand out. Good teams invariably have good openers. It is a rarity that both Gauti and Viru would miss the same series. So for the moment one good opener would be good. I thought MV was a good candidate. But IPL has really spoilt his test career. Especially he is very good against spin also. That is a big plus. He needs to make A tours a lot. He got decent temperament to build an innings as he showed against Australia with his century. But he has to learn to leave the balls. He used to do that well. Nowadays he tries to play at everything.

[sarcastic]

Why not Kaif? Ofcourse he cannot put bat to ball on anything bowled over 116kmph but if we keep that minor detail aside we can consider his uselessness as well right about now. :-)

May be you were joking about it but I do think that it is worth giving Kaif a try..> Kaif always looked like a test batsman. He lacked the big shots and ability to accelerate but was very consistent and in the mould of Dravid/Badri to an extent. That is he scored runs at a slow pace but kept himself notout and kept the scoreboard moving. Kaif has done very well in the last many domestic seasons and he deserves one more rope at international level.

[phaedrus]

its good to see the discussion move on from the main openers to the reserves! agree about MV. He needs to get back to the test mode asap. wonder if another middle order bat can be tried as an opener. Pujara maybe? or Kohli? they seem to have the technique to counter pace. not the best way to go about it but it is an option.

[vvvslaxman]

its good to see the discussion move on from the main openers to the reserves! agree about MV. He needs to get back to the test mode asap. wonder if another middle order bat can be tried as an opener. Pujara maybe? or Kohli? they seem to have the technique to counter pace. not the best way to go about it but it is an option.

It can go both ways. Either ruin a career or make a career. Laxman, Dravid, Yuvraj could not be consistent as openers. On the other hand Viru flourished as an opener. Parthiv got mixed results. Karthik actually was not bad. His career average 27. As an opener KKD averages 40 with a century and 5 fifties out of 14 innings.

[vvvslaxman]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/west-indies-v-india-2011/content/current/story/520549.html Here is an extract from this article Vijay, who was suffering from a finger injury sustained during the pre-match training session in the nets, fell cheaply in both innings. Abhinav Mukund, the debutant opener, was better, and looked good in the second innings, but he failed to convert starts of 11 and 25. Asked a direct question about the performance of Vijay, Dhoni chose instead to answer it in a holistic way. "I think it's important to have a pool of openers," he said. "Because opening is one slot that you know, you may be a very good opener but at international level till you are tested, it's very difficult to say by playing domestic cricket you can really adapt to the Test conditions. You have different kinds of bowlers and it is very different. So it's very important to have a pool of openers and they should be given games. "I feel this is one area where the India A tours are very important because the youngsters who get exposure to international conditions and the upcoming players of different teams who might play for their respective countries. It's important to have them. Abhinav Mukund also looked positive in this game, which means we have quite a pool of openers where we can give them a fair amount of matches whenever we have chance and look to groom them, so that in the future, we can have a settled pair of openers. Now we have, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir doing a great job for us."

[Cricket Tragic]

India always had perennial problem with openers. Tried so many people. So far only Gauti and Viru stand out. Good teams invariably have good openers. It is a rarity that both Gauti and Viru would miss the same series. So for the moment one good opener would be good. I thought MV was a good candidate. But IPL has really spoilt his test career. Especially he is very good against spin also. That is a big plus. He needs to make A tours a lot. He got decent temperament to build an innings as he showed against Australia with his century. But he has to learn to leave the balls. He used to do that well. Nowadays he tries to play at everything.

I made this point yesterday though I din't know about the impact of the IPL. When he made his debut in 2008, he looked a solid player with a tight technique. Now he is so loose and flashy outside off stump. He should have improved his game but based on what I've seen (only tests/ODIs), he has gone backwards technique wise.

[phaedrus]

its also to do with his shot selection. He used to be content at leaving a lot of balls alone. infact heard Gavaskar praise him for that quite a few number of times. In the second innings he got a terrible ball but that shot in the first innings was atrocious. Hope he goes back and sees the earlier innings and take the cue.

[Karan114]

India always had perennial problem with openers. Tried so many people. So far only Gauti and Viru stand out. Good teams invariably have good openers. It is a rarity that both Gauti and Viru would miss the same series. So for the moment one good opener would be good. I thought MV was a good candidate. But IPL has really spoilt his test career. Especially he is very good against spin also. That is a big plus. He needs to make A tours a lot. He got decent temperament to build an innings as he showed against Australia with his century. But he has to learn to leave the balls. He used to do that well. Nowadays he tries to play at everything.

That's the one innings that still gives me hope for his Test career. But I'd really like to see him get a score on a bowler friendly pitch away from home. As you stay, he needs to start leaving balls again, something he wasn't looking to do in Jamaica in the first innings.

[pensionplan]

Kaif has done very well in the last many domestic seasons and he deserves one more rope at international level.

Hmm...Kaif has done very well in the many last many domestic seasons. Really? Let us look at the very last domestic season. His name is conspicuously missing from the list of the top 50 run getters in the Indian domestic season. Enough said. http://stats.espncricinfo.com/indiandomestic2010/engine/records/batting/most_runs_career.html?class=4;host=6;id=2010%2F11;type=season

[Cricketics]

I still beleive, keeping age aside, Wasim Jaffer is still one of the best test openers in India. He might not have performed in Australia, but I can assure you, he is still one of our top batsmans when it comes to test cricket. His elegance, his control still continues for Mumbai when he plays. I want to see more of him in International cricket.