 The end of Indian opening blues?
28th May 2007 22:57 IST
Manish Kumar
With the advent of Wasim Jaffer and Dinesh Karthik, India seems to have finally solved their perennial problem of a stable opening partnership in Test cricket.
Ever since the retirement of Sunil Gavaskar, India have not really had good openers to whither out the red cherry. The Little Master, of course, did much more than that.
The names of Sadagopan Ramesh, Shiv Sunder Das, Devang Gandhi, Deep Dasgupta, Sanjay Bangar, Aakash Chopra come to mind instantly when one thinks of the previous openers that India used and dumped, some for not performing to full expectations like Ramesh, Das, Gandhi and Dasgupta and some for reasons unknown like Bangar and Chopra.
Bangar opened with Virender Sehwag with reasonable success on India’s last tour to England and Chopra partnered his Delhi teammate Sehwag on India’s tour to Australia in 2003-04 and was also a reasonable success.
But after a few disappointing matches, both Bangar and Chopra were discarded and now even Sehwag – the only Indian triple centurion – has found himself out of favour in Test cricket.
So glaring was the Indian opening problem that sometimes even Rahul Dravid stepped up the order and opened the innings and when he didn’t he had to walk in quite early as number three due to another opener’s failure.
And in the name of experimentation, even Irfan Pathan was once made to open by Greg Chappell in a Test.
Jaffer made his entry into the first class cricket scoring a triple century in his second match. An opening batsman, with the style of Mohammed Azharuddin, much was expected of Jaffer when he made his Test debut against South Africa in 2000.
However, Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald were too difficult for Jaffer to handle and he was dropped from the team.
Jaffer was recalled to the Test team for the tour of Pakistan 2005-06 in the wake of excellent domestic form, but did not play in the Test matches. It was in the next series in India that Jaffer scored his maiden Test century scoring exactly 100 against England at Nagpur, in his first Test since his recall.
Jaffer scored his first Test double century at the Antigua Recreation Ground against the West Indies in June 2006. In July 2006, his position as India's first-choice opener to partner Sehwag was confirmed via the award of a central contract (Grade C) by the BCCI.
Jaffer was selected for ODI series in November 2006 against South Africa, making his ODI debut. However, Jaffer was unproductive and was immediately dropped from the ODI team. However, he continued to score in the Test format, making his third Test century against South Africa at Newlands, Cape Town.
And after becoming the first player to register a king pair against Bangladesh in Test cricket, Jaffer scored his fourth century in the second Test and retired hurt on 138.
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