Spinner opening bowling for India

Harbahajan Singh on Thursday opened the bowling with Zaheer Khan. This provided the rare instance of a spinner opening the bowling for India.

Scorecard | Day 1 highlights

A regular scene in Indian cricket in the seventies, this has not happened atleast for quite some time. In fact the last time a spinner opened for India was Anil Kumble against South Africa at Bangalore in 1999-00.

The following table lists the instances of a spinner/non-regular bowler opening the bowling for India in a Test since Kapil Dev's made his debut in 1978.

Bowler 1	Bowler 2	Opponent	Venue	Season	Remarks
Kapil Dev	M Amarnath	Pakistan	Faisalabad	1978-79	Kapil's debut Test
Kapil Dev	SM Gavaskar	Pakistan	Lahore	1978-79
Kapil Dev	DR Doshi	Australia	Melbourne	1980-81	Despite presence of Karsan Ghavri
Kapil Dev	SM Patil	New Zealand	Auckland	1980-81
Kapil Dev	RJ Shastri	West Indies	Bombay	1983-84
Kapil Dev	M Amarnath	England	Kanpur	1984-85
Kapil Dev	RJ Shastri	Australia	Sydney	1985-86	Despite presence of Chetan Sharma
Kapil Dev	M Amarnath	Pakistan	Jaipur	1986-87
Kapil Dev	M Amarnath	Pakistan	Ahmedabad	1986-87
Kapil Dev	M Amarnath	West Indies	Madras	1987-88	Hirwani's debut Test
Kapil Dev	Arshad Ayub	New Zealand	Bangalore	1988-89
MM Prabhakar	A Kumble	England	Madras	1992-93	Despite presence of Kapil Dev
J Srinath	SC Ganguly	Australia	Calcutta	1997-98
Harvinder Singh	SC Ganguly	Australia	Bangalore	1997-98
J Srinath	SC Ganguly	New Zealand	Kanpur	1999-00
J Srinath	A Kumble	South Africa	Bangalore	1999-00
Zaheer Khan	SC Ganguly	Australia	Madras	2000-01
J Srinath	SC Ganguly	England	Bangalore	2001-02
Zaheer Khan	Harbhajan Singh	Australia	Mumbai (WS)	2004-05

Note: Only the first-innings performances have been taken into consideration