I don't think he's made the most out of them sadly, as Mamoon said he's far better playing his aggressive game and should have gone with that. It's harder to do that as an opener for him due to his weaknesses against pace, but middle order or even lower order it's easier. And his technical deficiencies would have been hid (similar to Malik). His timing is exquisite and when in form, looks miles better player than he actually is. I'd daresay sometimes watching him I wonder why this man isn't averaging 40 rather than low 30s.
I don't buy this stuff Hafeez was adamant to open or hogging the opener slot. He simply batted where he was told to bat. I mean he himself went down to 3 in T20s when he was captain, and I think 4 was probably ideal for him. It's up to management/captain to make the call, I doubt Hafeez penned in where he was going to bat each game.
I think be batted up the order due to the fact he had experience opening, and so that we could play other middle order bats in lower positions like Umar Akmal, Maqsood, Malik etc. We didn't exactly have an influx of talented opening bats at the time. I think it was worth him opening if it meant better talents could be groomed middle order. However that didn't work out unfortunately, none of the youngsters of that era e.g. maqsood,umar, shehzad, jamshed etc. made it. Changed now given we have quite a few
promising top order players who are better against pace now, which is also why Hafeez is now batting down too, but it's a bit too late, nearing the end of his career now.
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