Cricket’s long-standing reputation as a batter’s game isn’t without basis, but seldom has it manifested itself more dominantly than during IPL 2024. Scores of more than 200 are being breached with monotonous regularity, more sixes are cascading per match than ever before, the bowlers are copping more punishment than, truth be told, they should.
Armed with a greater understanding of the demands of the 20-over format and buoyed by their pre-season work which entails topping up both skills and powers, batsmen are throwing caution to the wind with absolute impunity. It will stand to reason that, with only 120 deliveries available to them, every ball needs to be maximised. Who best to maximise that than the men tasked with setting the tone, laying the foundation – the openers?
Opening the batting makes different demands, depending on the format. In Test cricket traditionally, that role has often been linked to blunting the new ball, to giving the first hour, if not more, to the bowlers, to gradually bed in and then build towards the long haul. With the ball at its newest and hardest and the bowlers at their freshest, survival more than run-making used to be the singular mantra. That has changed to a great extent in recent times, with the likes of Chris Gayle, Virender Sehwag, Matthew Hayden and more recently Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Yashasvi Jaiswal showing that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Even so, the majority of openers in the long-form game rely on conservatism as opposed to adventurism.
The ‘rules’ aren’t as cut-and-dried in the 50-over format, where there is an admixture of those that like to begin cautiously and those who step on the accelerator straight-away. Of course, conditions too will have a say in how batsmen approach an innings, though with almost every One-Day International now being played under lights, the threat of any early-morning swing and nip that the quicker bowlers might have envisaged is practically non-existent.
Fortunate position
It’s the third international variant of the sport that has brought the best out of the willow-wielders. Especially those who are in the fortunate position of facing the most number of deliveries. The opening batters, the ones who seek to cash in on the field restrictions in the six PowerPlay overs, those who have vast acreage to access and who can hit through the line without fear or favour, snug and smug in the knowledge that there will be no deviation off the straight even with the brand-new white ball.
Season 17 of the IPL has brought, and kept, opening batsmen of various hues in sharp focus. Some are silken smooth and don’t believe in needing to embrace the unorthodox, such as Virat Kohli. Others are less tradition-bound; they think nothing of walking across the stumps and scooping to fine-leg, even if it is the first ball of the match. Such as Travis Head. There was a time when such daredevilry of the kind Head repeatedly indulges in used to trigger waves of shock and awe. Now, it hardly creates a ripple because even the thought-processes of those watching and observing have changed, the threshold for the ‘unexpected’ has touched unprecedented heights.
When it comes to the IPL, the unalloyed aggression of the openers can, in part, be attributed to the origin of the Impact Player, introduced in 2023. Largely designed to ensure that teams can play five specialist bowlers and don’t therefore need the ‘bits-and-pieces’ players to fill in for the fifth bowler, the Impact Player rule has potentially served the exact opposite purpose. While it is true that an additional specialist bowling option has always been employed, that has been neutralised by the influx of intrepid batsmen, either at the top of the order or in the middle, who know that 95 times out of 100, it is impossible to be bowled out within 20 overs and therefore the license to keep at it ball after ball must be utilised to the hilt.
A quick look at the top 10 run-getters of the tournament* reveals that beyond the admirable Rajasthan Royals duo of skipper Sanju Samson and Riyan Parag, the rest are all designated openers, reiterating that that is the best place to bat in a T20 game. Kohli is the leading run-maker this season – he has been so almost from the first week of the competition – with 634 runs so far. Impressively consistent as that is, as an average of 70.44 and one century and five fifties in 12 innings will confirm, it’s his strike-rate that has attracted greater attention.
Strong case
This year, Kohli is scoring nearly 20 runs more (153.51) per hundred deliveries faced than his entire career T20 strike-rate (134.31). That is remarkable on so many counts, not least because even at 35, the former India skipper with an enviable volume of work in nearly 16 years of international cricket is unwilling to rest on his laurels. He might have been a little late in coming to the T20 party, but Kohli’s journey of evolution is far from over and he has made a strong case for himself to open the batting alongside his captain Rohit Sharma at the T20 World Cup.
At the other end of the age, experience and accomplishment spectrum is Jake Fraser-McGurk, only 21 years of age when IPL 2024 commenced on March 22. Tall, rangy, blessed with the fearlessness of one so young and with an array of strokes to die for, the Australian has taken the tournament by storm. It wasn’t until nearly halfway through their stuttering campaign that Delhi Capitals eventually unleashed the beast. Fraser-McGurk has since been on a mission to make up for lost time, three half-centuries in less than 20 balls apiece bearing testament to the ease with which he can clear boundaries, most of them in the traditional ‘V’.
There have been suggestions that the shorter boundaries have played into the batsmen’s hands but those who have watched this year’s action more than just cursorily will agree that apart from a handful, most of the 1,000-plus sixes have sailed deep into the stands, not laboured to land just outside the boundary rope. True, the bats have become better, the sweet spots larger and the batsmen stronger, but to not apportion skill as one of the reasons will be ill-advised.
Sunrisers Hyderabad heroes Head and Abhishek Sharma have left bowlers quaking in their boots, their brutal dismantling of Lucknow Super Giants last week too fresh in memory to bear repetition. Debunking the theory that the most effective opening combination is a left-right one, the two left-handers are making merry against all-comers. Between them, they have uncorked 91 fours and 66 sixes in 12 innings, both striking at more than 200 per hundred balls faced. One (Abhishek) is a slayer of spin (but not only spin), the other is more at home dispatching the quicker bowlers to unusual parts of the ground. They complement each other effortlessly and twice this year, as a pair, they have clattered to more than 100 runs without being separated in the PowerPlay.
Salt adds spice
Almost matching them for effect are Phil Salt and Sunil Narine, the Kolkata Knight Riders duo. After a lull over the last three seasons when bowlers seemed to have figured out Narine’s weakness against the short ball, the West Indian – primarily a wicket-taker, lest we should forget – has rolled the years back while Salt, a replacement player who was stunningly overlooked at the auction, has added spice to this season’s proceedings. It’s as if both hate running between the wickets; like Head and Abhishek, they have also married unabashed ball-striking with exceptional consistency, one of the reasons for KKR making a strong pitch for a top-two finish.
The latest pair to fire the imagination is Shubman Gill and B. Sai Sudharsan, the Gujarat Titans duo who on Friday equalled the highest opening stand in IPL history, 210. For reasons best known to them, last year’s finalists chose to wait until their 12th match of the season to unite them at the top. It’s unlikely they will make a similar mistake going forward, not after the duo subjected Chennai Super Kings to a spectacular lashing in Ahmedabad. Kohli and Faf du Plessis have been Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s answer to Head-Abhishek and Salt-Narine, even if their exploits haven’t been as mind-boggling as the other two pairs. Kohli has attributed his enhanced strike-rate this year to shedding the fear of being dismissed, a quality that doesn’t come readily to someone brought up in an era where 20-over cricket was in its infancy, at best.
Openers may not always win a game in the PowerPlay, but they sure can lose it if they don’t provide the necessary impetus. One need not look beyond the two teams at the bottom of the pile, Mumbai Indians and Punjab Kings, for validation. There is a reason why well begun is half done. It’s a maxim on which several making a push for spots in the playoffs have thrived. Only a special talent like Suryakumar Yadav is capable of conjuring six T20 hundreds while batting largely at No. 3 and No. 4. The rest won’t settle for anything less than opening the batting. With good reason.
*updated till the end of Sunday’s fixture between RCB and DC
