Openers, good openers are an extremely vital part of any team's batting lineup. If openers can provide their with a good start at a good pace, it really helps the rest of the top order and the middle order and takes pressure away from them. Trouble is it's not very easy to find a good opening combination. Such is the case with Pakistan, in the last few years they've tried quite a few combinations, Salman Butt and Imran Farhat in tests. Kamran Akmal, Salman Butt, Imran Nazir, Nasir Jamshed in ODIs and a lot of the same ones have been tried for multiple formats but it just hasn't worked out very good. I mean don't get me wrong, sometimes their openers have had some very good partnerships but when you compare the performance of the Pakistani openers to Australian openers or team India openers, their performance is far better than the Pakistani openers.
Seeing the fact that this has now been a problem for a few years, I decided to make this post and share with you guys the players who I see as good long term contenders for the openers job.
The contenders:
Salman Butt: A classy left handed opener with subtle wrists that make him like the classy Saeed Anwar. He cover drives are just glorious to watch and he score runs at different paces in different situation. That makes suitable for all formats. He came into the team and was handed the opening job from day 1 and has impressed overall.
Kamran Akmal: Karmran Akmal is a wicket keeper batsman whose explosive nature can turn the tide on any opposition, making him perfect for opening in Twenty20 and ODIs. There is very doubt about the quality of his batting, the purity in his drives and the strength that he displays with his cuts and pulls has a very strong feel to it.
Imran Nazir: Another one of those explosive batsmen produced by Pakistan. He has been in and out of the side but really this guy is the ideal player you would want as an opener for Twenty20 and ODI's because he can make the most of the powerplay and can put bowlers under pressure right from the start.
That's it, now I know some of you will be surprised that why do I think that there are only 3 contenders when there are a lot of other openers such as Shahzaib Hasan, Nasir Jamshed, Imran Farhat, Mohammed Hafeez etc etc. Well the answers is simple, Shahzaib and Nasir haven't really played that much cricket for Pakistan yet so lets see how they perform in the future as for guys like Farhat and Hafeez, yes, he has played quite a few matches for Pakistan as an opener he hasn't had much success like the above 3 contenders and they still has quiet a few areas to improve on. Hafeez in particular has been very disappointing and he actually averages better as a bowler than as a batsman. Moreover he scores runs at a slow pace and I he is just not the right guy to be given the job of opening. He will be better off at #6 (imho).
Anyway, that's about it for this post. See you next time :)
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