History bears testimony to the fact that great teams have been served by solid opening partnership. Some of the formidable opening partnerships in the last five decades include pairs like Bobby Simpson-Bill Lawry (Australia), Gordon Greenidge- Desmond Haynes (West Indies), Mark Taylor-Michael Slater (Australia) and Matthew Hayden-Justin Langer (Australia). Even the present English team, which is poised to take over as the No 1 Test team in the world, is powered by two of their finest players in Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, even if the two are not in the same league as the above-mentioned names.
Quality openers are tough characters whose mindset is way different from batsmen that follow down the order. Their importance right at the top can never be underestimated. Unlike the middle-order batsmen, openers have to be mentally prepared to walk in blind, so to say; they have no idea of the bounce factor or the kind of movement to expect in the air and off the wicket when they set out to face the first ball of a game. The bowlers themselves are fresh and have the energy to go full tilt at the batsmen. Even on tracks that are not bowler-friendly, the early pressure is on the openers. They not only have to see the new ball through but provide the kind of platform for the batsmen to follow to savage a tiring and/or demoralized attack.
Opening the innings is such a huge mental factor that given the option between opening the innings and coming out to face the second ball of the innings, a one-drop bat would invariably opt for the latter. Even that one-ball advantage plays a big part.
Except two of the Tests, all the other victories were under Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s captaincy:
Partnership | Openers | Opposition | Venue | Year |
57 & 45 | V Sehwag-W Jaffer | Australia | Perth | 2008** |
167 & 90 | V Sehwag-G Gambhir | Sri Lanka | Galle | 2009 |
37 - XX | V Sehwag-G Gambhir | New Zealand | Hamilton | 2009 |
XX – 39* | G Gambhir-R Dravid | New Zealand | Hamilton | 2009 |
79 & 90 | V Sehwag-G Gambhir | Bangladesh | Chittagong | 2010*** |
103 & 2* | V Sehwag-G Gambhir | Bangladesh | Mirpur | 2010 |
49 & 10 | V Sehwag-M Vijay | Sri Lanka | Colombo | 2010 |
43 & 42 | V Sehwag-M Vijay | South Africa | Durban | 2010 |
*unbeaten
** Anil Kumble was the captain
*** Virender Sehwag was the captain
How the replacement openers served India in West Indies & England:
15 & 0 | (M Vijay & A Mukund) | 1st Test vs West Indies at Sabina Park |
1 & 26 | (M Vijay & A Mukund) | 2nd Test vs West Indies at Kensington Oval |
13 & 0 | (M Vijay & A Mukund) | 3rd Test vs West Indies at Windsor Park |
63 & XX XX & 19 | (G Gambhir & Mukund) (R Dravid & A Mukund) | 1st Test vs England at Lord’s |
0 & 6 | (R Dravid & A Mukund ) | 2nd Test vs England at Trent Bridge |
