Opening was a special skill once upon a time.
Test openers seemed to come from one of two groups.
There were stoic chaps who were picked on and beaten as children.
This made them tough. Players like Boycott, Gavaskar, Langer, and other nuggetty sods that would happily take balls on the chest for hours on end to protect their wicket.
There has also been devil may care openers like Trumper, Slater, the One true god Sehwag.
These guys decided that blunting the new ball meant hitting it as hard as they could as often as they could.
But both of these types were proper openers.
To be a successful opening batsman it needed to be in your blood. You had to be a sick fucker to go out and face the fastest and scariest bowlers.
Very few middle order batsmen ever had the testicular power to move themselves up the order.
Today you don’t need balls to open the batting, anyone can do it.
I thought Shane Watson was the end of opening batsmen.
But Dilshan’s promotion was just taking the piss.
Before this test Dilshan had never batted at 3, and had batted at 4 twice.
Then he opens up, and he plays a 2020 innings to get the series starting.
Now I love attacking opening batsman, but Dilshan looks as much like an opening test batsman as my last shit does.
You just don’t need to be an opening batsman anymore.
Just a batsman.
If you can bat at 7, you can open.
Call it the Irfan Pathan Rule, mention the Krab Katich’s technique, watch Shane Watson look comfortable facing the first ball, or just refer people to Dilshan’s 92 off 72.
