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Greatest opening pair

Pothas

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Greatest opening patnership

Throught cricket history their have been brilliant opening pairs but who were the best?

The legendry hampshire pair of Barry Richards and Gordan Grenidge takes some beating
 
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FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
Hobbs and Sutcliffe for me.

Hobbs is the greatest opener of all time in my opinion, and Sutcliffe certainly sits in the next group with guys like Gavaskar, Hutton, Boycott and Greenidge. No other long-term opening pair has contained two all-time greats of that calibre, so it's got to be Hobbs and Sutcliffe.

Honorable mentions go to Greenidge/Haynes, Lawry/Simpson and Hayden/Langer. Some others that have been amazingly prolific but only lasted a short time in comparison are Smith/Gibbs and Morris/Barnes. Probably missed a few as well. :)

Their average of 87.81 with 15 century stands in 25 tests illustrates this perfectly. Only Greenidge and Haynes have more century stands opening the batting, and they had 89 tests together and only managed 16. Hayden and Langer have 13 in 50 tests.
 
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Zinzan

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Definately Hobbs and Sutcliffe.......I'd be interested if there were any stats out there that gave an indication of famous openers and their pecentage of their teams total. I'm sure if there were ...Hobbs and Sutcliffe would have scored a higher proportion of their teams runs than others
 

a massive zebra

International Captain
Here are some relevant statistics.

..............................................Mat I NO Runs Ave 100 50
JB Hobbs & H Sutcliffe (Eng) 25 38 1 3249 87.81 15 10
GC Smith & HH Gibbs (RSA) 25 42 3 2699 69.20 7 8
JB Hobbs & W Rhodes (Eng) 22 36 1 2146 61.31 8 5
RB Simpson & WM Lawry (Aus) 34 62 3 3596 60.94 9 18
L Hutton & C Washbrook (Eng) 28 51 3 2880 60.00 8 13
GA Gooch & MA Atherton (Eng) 24 44 0 2501 56.84 7 12
JL Langer & ML Hayden (Aus) 50 87 1 4648 54.04 13 18
SM Gavaskar & CPS Chauhan (Ind) 36 59 3 3010 53.75 10 10
MA Taylor & MJ Slater (Aus) 44 78 2 3887 51.14 10 16
MP Vaughan & ME Trescothick (Eng) 28 52 3 2386 48.69 5 15
DL Haynes & CG Greenidge (WI) 89 148 11 6482 47.31 16 26
G Kirsten & HH Gibbs (RSA) 31 52 0 2304 44.30 5 11
MS Atapattu & ST Jayasuriya (SL) 66 114 7 4340 40.56 9 23
 

a massive zebra

International Captain
Pedro Delgado said:
Naeem Islama and Nafees Iqbal, or Hannan Sarkar and Javed Omar.
Thomas Routledge and Frank Hearne were far worse than either of them. Although clearly not Test class, Javed Omar is hardly the worst batsman in the history of man and Nafees Iqbal has a (questionable) Test century.
 

Anil

Hall of Fame Member
hobbs and sutcliffe according to stats...

greenidge and haynes from the playere i have seen...

hayden and langer from this era has also been very good...
 

luckyeddie

Cricket Web Staff Member
Anil said:
hobbs and sutcliffe according to stats...

greenidge and haynes from the playere i have seen...

hayden and langer from this era has also been very good...
My exact same choices, although I have a soft spot for Boycott and Edrich too.
 

Armadillo

State Vice-Captain
Call me biased but Anwar and Afridi provided great entertainment value, not that they were in any way reliable.
 

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