Open with Sehwag in Tests

As India goes forth once more in its quest to conquer foreign lands, the perennial question remains - How do we distinguish between batsmen No. 3 and 4 and the openers. Miss out on a couple of minutes of action at start of play and one has to look at the score sheet to get convinced Dravid didn't open with Tendulkar.

In England, we will undoubtedly experiment with Das / Jaffer / Bangar in the opening slots, shuttling them around every match or so and then howling for Dravid to come up the order or put the hapless Ratra / Patel at the end of the tightrope. It is inevitable this happens because despite our search for an opener surpassing our search for all-rounder and a wicketkeeper batsman, we still have people manning the position who can only open their car door with any confidence. Somewhere, this has to stop, no?

The problem is the Indian belief in bookish theory -- hence 'Opening is a specialist job'. Australia has re-defined the way cricket is played but we still insist on calling on an opener to open the innings and an all-rounder to take up the all-rounder's slot. We don't have an all-rounder worthy of being called so but that doesn't stop us from including Bangar as an all-rounder because he is "supposed" to be an all-rounder. Same is the case with the opening slot, where we made Dinesh Mongia sit out the entire series and yet persisted with an awful looking Das and an utterly clueless Bangar because they are "supposed" to be openers.

Talking of "experienced" openers is really a contradiction to our popularly held beliefs. We talk of our domestic league being extremely low in quality; we talk of the huge gap between what is required in Ranji trophy and Duleep trophy and playing the Aussies or the South Africans. So why this special focus on a batsman who opens in domestic cricket for the opening slot in the Indian cricket team? What great gift is this "specialist" going to have? Assuming our domestic cricket sucks, what are we looking for - the opener in domestic cricket who sucks the least?

When Gavaskar opened and was successful, it wasn't only because he played his entire career as an opener. It was because he was an extremely good batsman, a hard worker who looked to better himself all the time and someone who had enough class and attitude to take on world-class bowlers. Once any player comes into the Indian team, he anyway plays an extremely small amount of domestic cricket, if any at all. After an opener / player does settle down in the Indian team, the only practice he is going to get to hone his skills is against McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Pollock. So what is all this fuss about specialist openers?

The Indian middle order is overflowing with people who can play at the International level but are not openers. Laxman, Dravid, Tendulkar, Sehwag and Ganguly are all proven players at the international level. With people like Mongia, Kaif and Yuvraj (I know - weak outside the off stump but let's at least call him a prospect) knocking on the doors of Test cricket, the problem today is too many batsmen in the middle order and none anywhere else. While we struggle to find an opener who looks like he knows what he is doing, we have a middle order from which not all can play every match. We have already seen the switching between Sehwag and Laxman during the England series and this is going to continue because you cannot have everyone batting in the middle. Any of Laxman, Mongia, Sehwag and Kaif will be bringing the drinks while Devang Gandhi or Vikram Rathore (long time ago, I know, but couldn't help bringing their names up; "specialists" who sucked big time), Bangar (opener for Railways), Hemang Badani (he opened once in South Africa), Dravid (when nothing else works push up Dravid), Laxman (frustration at sitting out for Sehwag might just make him queue up again) and Ratra / DDG (whoever is the keeper of the day) will waltz in and out of one slot in the team, which is precisely one-eleventh of our team strength.

Does that make sense? Are we going to search for an opener till the time Tendulkar retires? No real reason for comparing a long time to Tendulkar's retirement except it seems a long way off.

The solution is simpler, one that has been tried before and one that is blindingly obvious - push up a middle order bat to open. The concept is the same but what is different is the way in which I propose the guinea pig be chosen. If one looks at the people I have mentioned above, it also includes Dravid, Badani, Laxman and the keepers, none of who are specialist openers but who have been tried at the position and have failed, lending weight to the logic of specialist openers being the answer. The fact that regular domestic openers (Gandhi, Bangar, Rathore) fail just as many times is forgotten. The players who opened and failed did so not because they were non-regular openers but because they were not suited to the role.

Dravid has everything that an opener requires, except the desire to open. He has opened now and then but he loses his battle in the walk from the dressing room to the pitch. Dravid is an excellent support man but don't look at him to lead. He plays with the weight of the world on his shoulders and to ask him to open is a losing cause before he walks onto the field. A friend of mine described it best when she said - "at the best of times Dravid has the look of a concerned squirrel on his face" which is really a brilliant description of Dravid at his relaxed best.

When he opened in South Africa, he came into bat looking like he would be executed at dawn. He then proceeded to poke his bat at the ball in a way that reminded me of Javagal Srinath and it wasn't too much of a surprise when he got out. It is all in the mind and Dravid will never be a success at opening unless he stops looking at it as a suicide mission. After almost six years in international cricket, I don't really see Dravid changing too much - the "concerned squirrel" part of him is too deeply imbedded in him to be changed.

Laxman is brilliant and he knows it as well as we do. The only problem is neither he nor we knows exactly when his brilliance is going to showcase itself. So can he open or can't he? I think he can but with Laxman it really doesn't depend on the number at which he comes in; he marches to a different drummer and probably we shall tear our hair in frustration for years to come at his brilliance in one match and absurdity in another. Again, though his Test record may not yet place him in the "Hall of Fame", when I see him play I see an absolutely born-to-be number three batsman. Laxman can open and can succeed or fail without there being any specific reason to it but if that experiment isn't done I have a hunch Indian cricket might just be the better for it.

The wicketkeepers will never succeed simply because most of them have no clue about batting at the highest level. Deep Das Gupta looks good enough to open at one end - currently he looks better than our regular opener SS Das - but when you consider the risk of his being asked to keep wickets to give the team flexibility (means compromising for some other superstar's poor form), the risk is too high.

Among the other middle order bats, Tendulkar at four looks solid. He is our best batsman and I don't even want to think of his opening. He might succeed but some risks are not worth taking and this is one of them. Ganguly cannot open for the simple fact that the opposition bowlers, if they don't die laughing, will clean him up without breaking a sweat. Our captain has many good points but an airtight technique, that is a must for opening, is not one of the highlights in his resume.

Dinesh Mongia is largely untested at the International front in Tests though he has shown promise in the shorter version of the game. He might succeed or he might not and is definitely worth a try but the important thing would be in his wanting to open, not make it a ticket to play a match or two. I don't know if Badani lost his nerve in the second innings in South Africa (he wasn't quite a howling success in the first innings; made two runs if I remember right) when he was supposed to open or whether there was some injury involved but let that be an example for Dinesh Mongia - think before you leap.

Finally, I come to the player who, to me, seems an absolutely fantastic prospect for the opener's slot - Virender Sehwag. Sehwag is someone who has a positive attitude, good technique and all the shots in the book and more. He looks comfortable in international cricket and doesn't seem to see too much difference between a Glenn McGrath and a Paras Mhambrey. For my money, this is the man who should be opening the Indian batting in the Tests in England and beyond.

Practically looking, the tools an opener needs are a) a good technique that is anyway a must for any batsman at any position, b) a positive attitude, including confidence in one's own ability to be upto the task on hand and looking at the job as a challenge rather than something that can't be somehow escaped and c) lots of courage that is necessary when you consider Brett Lee or Shoaib Akhtar could be thundering in to throw a 155-160 K.m.p.h. thunderbolt at you.

Dravid passes point a and c but fails at b. Ganguly fails at point a though b and c are within his reach and might help him overcome point a, though it is doubtful. A lot of people, including the keepers fail at point a itself without which points b and c really mattering. When I look at Sehwag, I see someone who passes all of these points with flying colors. He has the attitude, he has the technique and he looks to be a man with enough guts to face anything the bowlers throw at him. Also, a totally random point in his favour that probably not a lot of you will make any sense of but for me is still a valid point - he comes from Najafgarh, a "Najafgarhi" as we used to call people from that area in school. They were the kind of people who didn't create any trouble for heck sake of it but who knew how to take care of trouble created by someone else. I don't exactly mean for Sehwag to go out there with a club in his hands and beat up McGrath for calling him a "#$%##$", but the point I am trying to make here is the attitude that people like Sehwag carry with them. A self confidence of being good enough to handle whatever comes at them; that is what will give us a good opener and not a specialist domestic opener who made three double centuries last season on dead tracks against mediocre attacks.

Sehwag is a naturally attacking batsman but the beauty of his attack is in its correctness. He doesn't need to sacrifice his technique for getting those savage square cuts, drives off back foot and front, turning his wrist to delicately play the ball through mid on or to smack it over mid-wicket. If it were a bad ball, he hits it and if it were a good ball then he defends it. No unnecessary complications and definitely, unlike Dravid, doesn't carry the world on his shoulders.

It is a hunch and it is debatable. Again, the most important part in this whole theory would be how receptive Sehwag himself would be to this idea. I like it but then I don't have to go out there - I would be sitting on my sofa eating chips. All I can say is I have a hunch the answer to our opening woes lie in our middle order and, more specifically, in Sehwag. Going whole hog for imagination being the rule for the day, Sehwag opening with Deep Das Gupta (with threats of a prison sentence if he dares to don the keeping gloves) sounds a better opening combination than any other we have today.

Yet, the plan may fail and Sehwag may be no different than the many others who came and went before him. Many would ask: why should Sehwag be the guinea pig and ruin his career? A just question, no doubt, and one for which no better or simpler answer can be given than to say that Sehwag should open because India needs an opener and he looks like he might just do good at it.

Playing for India should be a matter of pride and the problem with the Indian team today is that a lot of players consider this to be their 9-6 shifts. Probably here is where the long delayed Contract system and the security that comes with it might make the players more amenable to going that extra bit. If Sehwag fails as an opener then he is good enough to fight and take back his middle order spot. If he succeeds then India wins big time. There is no "why Sehwag and not Ganguly or Dravid or Tendulkar" here. We aren't talking lottery tickets here. We are talking Indian cricket and Sehwag can succeed.

Geoffrey Boycott talked a lot during the India / West Indies series about Ramnaresh Sarawan opening the batting in Tests, with his technique and his temperament seemingly ideal for the job. I am no Geoffrey Boycott and "me mum" isn't a better all-rounder than Ajit Agarkar but I have had a few hunches go my way in the past - predicting a successful captaincy stint for Ganguly two years back and listing precisely those points he is admired / vilified for today - and I see no reason why this hunch also should not pay off.

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Mail Sriram Ranganathan