In any format, opening the innings is the most difficult job in cricket. Opening requires great judgment, putting up a solid defence, concentrating hard and gaining expertise in facing short balls. An opener must know when to play and when to leave the ball.
After the retirement of Saeed Anwar and Aamir Sohail, no pair has settled to open the innings for Pakistan.
Pakistan have tried 14 opening combinations since 2010 and only Mohammad Hafeez and Taufeeq Umar, who played 35 innings together, provided some reasonable foundations.
Taufeeq has been out of sight for a long time but Hafeez is a regular part of the national team. He is currently the most reliable opening batsman in all forms of the game for the country.
He has been paired with eight batsmen since Misbah-ul-Haq took over the captaincy in 2010.
Openers have been the weakest point in Pakistan’s unstable batting line-up. Last year against England in UAE, Pakistan’s opening partnerships were 5, 3, 51, 1 and 5.
Only in the last two years, the management tried nine opening batsmen, but the opening slot remained as uncertain as ever.
In 2014, opener Ahmed Shehzad became the first Pakistan batsman to have a hundred in all international formats, and with three centuries he averaged 48 after nine Tests. It looked that Pakistan had found a solution to this long-standing opening problem, but after some time like the others his performance declined.
In the recently concluded Twenty20 series against New Zealand, Shehzad scored only 33 runs in three matches. Earlier, in one-day series he scored only 25 runs in two matches.
How many opportunities does he need to prove his "talent" and how long can the management wait for his "form" to return?
Shehzad has played 75 One-day Internationals, scored 2510 runs, averaging 33.91 with six hundreds and 13 fifties.
He has played 19 ODIs since January 2015, scored 595 runs, including four fifties, but no hundred. He also played in 12 Twenty20 Internationals in 2015 and scored 232 runs at an average of just 19.33. These statistics show the inconsistency and immaturity of the opening batsman.
Around a year ago before the second Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo, Pakistan coach Waqar Younis had a personal session with Shehzad over two days for batting practice with four new balls to prepare him for a pitch that was expected to support fast bowlers. But there was no change in Shehzad’s performance as he stayed on the crease for just 12 minutes before giving a simple catch to slips after scoring one run.
In 2015, after a poor World Cup in which he scored 227 runs at an average of 32 with two fifties against Associates, Shehzad was dropped from the Pakistan squad for the tour of Bangladesh.
The main thing for an opener is to handle pressure and show patience. Shehzad failed to impress the team selectors during last year’s Zimbabwe tour. Shehzad scored just 24 runs in two T20 matches and 44 runs in two ODIs during the Zimbabwe tour.
Pakistan Test team captain Misbahul Haq and head coach Waqar Younis had reportedly suggested to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) that Shehzad and Umar Akmal should be made to play domestic cricket for some time so that they could become disciplined players.
Shehzad mostly finds fielders when he tries to pull or hook. T20 captain Shahid Afridi, Shehzad’s best supporter for a long time, has finally showed his disappointment with the opener’s efforts.
After losing the Twenty20 series against New Zealand, Pakistan also lost the One-day International series 2-0.
Since the appointment as head coach, Pakistan lost seven ODI series out of 10 Pakistan.
In contrast, India’s Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli are in tremendous form. If they can crush Australia on their soil, what are they going to do when they play at home!