The hunt for a proper opening pair continues

Barely had they recovered from the wounds inflicted upon them in Australia when the Indians were asked to wave the magic wand to ward off their cricketing blues in the Test series against South Africa. But not unexpectedly, they surrendered meekly when pitted against plainly superior opposition. Of the number of reasons given for the debacle, one which seems to get top priority is the lack of a suitable opening pair.

Only the genuine opener possesses the twin qualities of technique and temperament to face the new ball successfully and counter the initial movement off the seam and the pitch. A good opening partnership really sets the platform for the later order batsmen to open the floodgates to a good total.

So it does come as a shocker when we see that the last time that India had a genuine opening pair in the team was when Arun lal and Srikkanth last appeared togather in the third and final Test against New Zealand at Hyderabad in 1988.

Since the time Sunil Gavaskar retired after the India-Pakistan series in 1987, India have played 28 pairs of openers so far in 86 Tests. Out of this line up, Arun lal, Vikram Rathour, Devang Gandhi, Sadagopan Ramesh and Wasim Jaffer were the only players who have been considered for the Indian team on their merit of being an opener. The rest of the lot includes make shift openers such as Ravi Shastri, Navjot Sidhu, Manoj Prabakar, Ajay Jadeja, Nayan Mongia, Sanjay Manjrekar, Rahul Dravid, WV Raman and VVS Laxman to name a few.

A glance at the records will show that the selectors inexplicably seem to have placed more faith on players pushed up the order rather than genuine openers. Between 1987 and 1989, Arun lal opened the innings for India in only 11 Tests along with Srikkanth and later on with Sidhu.

After the exit of both Srikkanth and Arun lal, the next real opener to come in was Rathour in the first India-England Test at Birmingham in 1996. But he was not very successful, scoring only 131 runs at an average of 13.10 in six Tests before being dropped. In this short tenure, his partners were Jadeja, Mongia and Raman. For a brief period in the late 90s, Ramesh seemed to be the answer to the selectors' prayers. But he came a cropper on the faster and bouncier tracks in Australia. The next to catch the selectors fancy was Devang Gandhi during the New Zealand tour of India last year but he has since been dropped after playing only four Tests and not a very impressive record.

Moreover, from 1987 to 2000, the contributions of the make shift openers have been nothing to write home about. There have been eight 100 plus parnerships in the post Gavaskar period. On the contrary there have been 11 occasions on which the batsmen have failed to even open their account and 35 times the pairing has realised below ten for the first wicket. In these failures, the Indian openers have seven of the 11 duck partnerships on foreign soil, whereas, of the eight hundred run partnerships, only three have been made outside India.

It is clearly seen that the inherent failures of the irregular openers has by far been our chief drawback. It has led to the dismal show of the team on foreign tours. So it has become imperative that specialists are to be nurtured. They should be given enough confidence and encouragement at the international level primarily in games at home before they are sent on foreign tours.