Like the body of an insect (as we learnt in biology class in school), the batting organism is divided into three parts: opening, middle order and tail (insects have head, thorax and abdomen). Each has a specific role and requires different skill sets.
The openers (one right-handed, one left in an ideal eleven) are like the spies sent out to survey the land, their responses conveying to those in the pavilion the nature of the pitch, the quality of the bowling, and the type of shots that would be profitable.
In the evocative words of Mike Marqusee, openers play the same percentages/to different rhythms, following/our own sequence/ of stressed and unstressed beats,/ each of us fashioning/our own departure from the norm.
