The job description of a Test opener is not something for the faint-hearted. There is no melody in chin music. Taking the analogy a little further, it is more of rock and roll … of the deadly variety. Its purpose is to rock you even if it means leaving you rolling on the turf.
In days gone by, with no helmets, no covered wickets and no restriction on the number of bouncers a bowler could bowl in an over, it rocked and rolled a bit too much and a few too many. But was it a downside without any upshot about it for the opening batsmen? It can’t be, really, for most things in life don’t work that way. In fact, life itself doesn’t work that way. So?
The role of an opening batsman — an opening pair actually — recently got the spotlight in the wake of Alastair Cook’s decision to call it a day, leaving England wondering where to go from here and how. In Cook’s retirement, Test cricket bade farewell to one of its finest practitioners, a man who belonged to the dying breed of people who love to focus their energies on keeping the shinning, hard, seaming ball away from their stumps — and body — and to knock it around long enough for those coming behind him to make merry.
In Alastair Cook’s retirement, England has lost a formidable opening batsman. A look back at some of Pakistan’s best at the top of the order ...
So, it is the pride of the selfless that keeps the openers going, you well might wonder. Not quite. Life doesn’t work this way either. The openers get to take the best shot at batting, and they can bat for as long as they want and for as long as they can survive. Contrast it with someone batting at, say, No 6 who runs out of partners frequently; a feeling that the openers hardly ever get to know of. They can bat on and on and on. Remember Hanif Mohammad and his 337 that spanned over 16 hours at Bridgetown in January 1958? That was just about a session less than three days of batting. That is what openers get to do every single time they go out to bat!
Pakistan, like all other entities in the Test arena, has had some wonderful openers over the years. Though Hanif was there at the very beginning, it was his partner Nazar Mohammad who faced the first ball for Pakistan, and subsequently became the first centurion for the national side. Had it not been for an incident — which had more to do with his personal-cum-domestic affairs than professional life — Nazar’s career would have gone on for much longer than the five Tests he could participate in.
Majid Khan and Sadiq Mohammad represented the first opening pair that produced consistent results for Pakistan. Interestingly, Majid had started as an opening bowler in October 1964 against the visiting Australians in Karachi, and batted at No 8, scoring a perfect nought. He had as his first partner Asif Iqbal, who batted at No 10. Majid went on to become an opening batsman while Asif became Pakistan’s Man of Crisis, batting in the middle order.
Incidentally, both Majid and Asif were debutants in that match alongside six others: Khalid Ibadullah, Abdul Kadir, Shafqat Rana and Pervez Sajjad. The former two of them opened the innings and had a partnership of 249 runs. Khalid scored a century — the first to do it on debut for Pakistan — while Kadir was tragically run out on 95. As fate would have it, the massive promise of the pairing lasted just three more Tests over the next three years. Such is life!
In his element as an opener, Majid was all that silken grace can ever hope to be. Even when he scored that rare century before lunch on the first day of a Test (against New Zealand in Karachi, 1976) he was no different. He was only the fourth man in history to do that, and yet there was nothing wham-bam about it. Sadiq, likewise, had that typical left-hander’s elegance while pulling on the swivel, cutting on the back foot or driving on the full. Together, they took Pakistan through the 1970s.
The next big pairing came into being when Mohsin Khan joined Mudassar Nazar, who happened to be Nazar Mohammad’s son; the first Pakistani father-son pair to represent Pakistan as an opener. Mohsin’s flamboyance jelled well with Mudassar’s dour but clinical approach to the task. In later years, Mudassar could not save himself from his partner’s stroke-play and they became quite a pair to have upfront. If anything, Mudassar outdid Mohsin by becoming ‘the man with the golden arm’ on the 1982 tour to England.
Just when they were going strong about the task, Shoaib Mohammad started pairing up with either of them when the other was down for whatever reason, or all three played, with one of them coming one-down. The Shoaib-Mudassar partnership practically lasted just about as long as was the case with their respective fathers Hanif and Nazar. There was no colourful episode — domestic or professional — this time round though.
The outstanding duo of the 1990s comprised Saeed Anwar and Aamer Sohail. It was reminiscent of the right-left combination of Majid and Sadiq and, in many ways, matched their output if one could adjust for all the variables that are inherent in the 20-year gap between the two partnerships.
It is some measure of Cook’s contribution to English cricket that the runs scored by him are a few hundred more than the top three Pakistani openers (Mudassar, Saeed and Majid); and his centuries are the equivalent of top three Pakistani century-makers (Hanif, Saeed and Mudassar). Monumental stuff for sure.
In the Pakistani context, it is hard to talk of anyone since the turn of the century in the same league as the honourable mentions above, and we are talking of about 18 years; bar Azhar Ali who has better statistics, if not impact factor, than anyone else among Pakistani openers.
With so much goodness having been discussed here, it is only fitting to end by leaving the choice of ‘the best’ to the readers, and to sign off by picking ‘the worst’ of them all because it is such an easy thing to do. The man who is the undisputed (okay, arguably undisputed) worst opener from whose presence Pakistan suffered for a good 57 Tests is the one and only Ramiz Raja (who else!) who averaged 31.83 across his 94 innings and scored two centuries in a career that lasted 13 years. Hearing his ‘expert’ comments on television is sheer fun, isn’t it?
Published in Dawn, EOS, September 23rd, 2018
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