The best opening pair in ODIs

When Graeme Smith walked out to defend 258 at Jaipur and win a place in the Champions Trophy final, he would have been fairly confident that he had the bowling firepower to make West Indies sweat. Just over an later, though, the South African fielders and bowlers were the ones dazed by a most astonishing onslaught by Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul - the pair added 154 in 26 overs before Chanderpaul was forced to retire. Despite the best efforts of the middle order to make a meal of it, the two West Indian openers had still done enough to ensure that their team would win.

Most of the teams in the Champions Trophy have been struggling to find reliable opening pairs, but not West Indies. Gayle and Chanderpaul are unlikely to be mentioned in the same breath as Greenidge-Haynes, Tendulkar-Ganguly or Jayasuriya-Atapattu, but it isn't because they haven't found success. The table below shows just how formidable a pair they have been in their short stint together - they average 58.53 per completed partnership, which is more than what any opening pair with at least 1500 ODI runs has managed.

West Indies have had plenty of problems in the recent past, but the least of their concerns has been the opening pairs. Apart from his amazing stands with Chanderpaul, Gayle has also forged a successful partnership with Wavell Hinds. In Gayle is one of five players who figure twice in the top ten - Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Adam Gilchrist are the other four.

The top ten has a healthy representation of Australians, West Indians and Indians, but none at all from Pakistan, England and New Zealand, which suggests the problems those teams have had at the top of the order. Pakistan's top representatives are, not surprisingly, Saeed Anwar and Aamer Sohail, who averaged 39.12 per completed stand, but managed only three century partnerships in 73 innings. England's best have been Marcus trescothick and Nick Knight (average 36.44 in 43 innings) while John Wright and Bruce Edgar (36.19 in 43 innings) have been New Zealand's most successful opening combination (among pairs which have scored at least 1500 ODI runs).

Gayle and Chanderpaul have opened in only 31 innings, but quite impressively, they have already had 14 fifty-plus stands (that's one every 2.21 innings). To put that in perspective, Greenidge and Haynes managed it once every 2.62 innings, while for Tendulkar and Ganguly the corresponding ratio was 3.16. The challenge for the pair will be to continue to be as successful over a considerably longer period of time.

Symonds the matchwinner
Australia's semi-final victory against New Zealand wasn't such a walk in the park, but if the numbers are anything to go by, they were more than 90% assured of victory the moment Andrew Symonds blasted a run-a-ball 58. Of the 25 occasions when Symonds has scored at least a half-century, Australia have only lost once. On 23 occasions they have won, while once the match was washed out. West Indies, though, may be buoyed to hear that the only defeat came against them, at Port-of-Spain in 2002-03.