A good start gives an edge in every sport and same is the case with cricket. With ball in hand team tries to get early wickets while with bat it tries to produce big opening partnership in the process of giving a target or chasing one. A big opening partnership? Something which is not common in Pakistan cricket.
If we look at the history of Pakistan cricket, we see some legendary pacers, spinners as well as middle order batsmen. However, when it comes to openers the well rather seems dry other than Saeed Anwer who was a class of his own in and averaged 45.52 in tests and almost 40 in ODIs. Hanif Mohammad was also a legend of his era, he averaged almost 44 in tests and averaged 41.87 as an opener.
Other than Saeed Anwer who was the only one to average over 45, Hanif Mohammad and Shoaib Mohammad who were close to that there isnt much to show in the test opening department for Pakistan when we compare them to the openers produced by some other top cricketing nations. Also all 3 were from 2-3 decades ago. Majid Khan, Mohsin Khan, Sadiq Mohammad etc were decent but not exactly greats of cricket statistically.
In ODIs with the two new balls, flat wickets and field restrictions things have definitely improved in terms of stats with Fakhar and Imam being better than most we have seen in the last couple of decades post Saeed Anwer however, even here more impact against top sides is required from these two and they havent been able to establish themselves much in other formats and their performances have been pretty limited to ODIs.
On the contrary if we see other teams around in tests we see Hayden, Warner, Sehwag, Cook, Smith etc averaging 45-50 runs in the last decade or two. In terms of consistently creating impact in ODIs in last two decades, we see Ghilchrist, Hayden, Tendulkar, Rohit, Dhawan, Roy, Guptill, Gayle, Quinten De kock, Amla etc. While the only world class opener we were able to produce in recent times was Saeed Anwer who retired on 2003. Imam and Fakhar may give bit of hope in LOIs but in tests Pak is really struggling with openers averaging in 20s and new faces are being tried as well.
Yes good opening batsmen are not that common especially in tests but they are definitely not as rare as Pakistan cricket has shown.
Nobody can deny the great cricketing legacy of Pakistan but if there one thing that can be called the Achilles heel for Pakistan cricket it is the opening position. This has let down Pak cricket more often than not in crucial WC encounters to overseas tests. Good openers make a big difference in every format of cricket and all the successful teams we have seen in the past had strong opening pairs.
It can only be hoped that somebody from new crop of openers puts his hand up and become a world class batsman in the coming decade as again the history is repeating itself and the the only world class player we have is Babar Azam who plays in the middle order in ODIs and tests.
