I think there is a tendency,moreso in India, to put a premium on the quality of backfoot play and defensive technique when assessing suitability for opening in test matches. Of course, it disappears as a criteria when someone like Sehwag comes around and hammers all bowlers with an all-out-aggression approach but its true by and large.
This has come from following the English system from the beginning of cricket in this country and one cant find too much wrong with it. Afterall, the greatest opening batsmen in India (Merchant, Gavaskar and Hanif in neighbouring Pakistan) and in England (Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hutton) have been in this mould.
This style has also been, in India, associated with Bombay batsmen and their propensity to play long innings. They just seemed to go on and on and on and this was due to their rock solid defence, superb technique against mental toughness. The speed of scoring and the match situation, apparently, did not come into the picture.
The strokeplayers came lower down the order and the big hitters further down. One suspects that inspite of the big influence of the limited overs game in the longer version, we havent really discarded this criteria, neither in India nor, one suspects, in England. Gavaskar and Hobbs continue to be the role models and the Mushtaq Ali's and Sehwags as the errant genius who occupied that place because we are just not fortunate enough to have two (mostly even one) Gavaskars available at the same time.
There is a logic and reasoning behind it for sure. The early moving ball, delivered by those capable of breaking your ribs too, is best negotiated by a solid backfoot technique, a good overall defense, a bat as straight and for as long into the stroke as possible and most importantly an uncanny and precise understanding of where your stumps are. The last not so much to play perfect strokes as to be able to leave all those balls alone that cant be profitably (and safely) scored off but are not going to hit the stumps. It is a great quality and differentiates the most successful openers (often enough to be taken on board as a pre-requisite) from those who would do better elsewhere in the order.
The changes in the attitude of batsmen around the world brought about by decades of limited overs game, the example of the West Indian dashers for even longer (although Conrad Hunte remains the epitome of the perfect openers for the West Indian connoisseur) and the general discarding of safety first methods by batsmen around the world hasnt changed much in India and one suspects in England.
Hence a Jaffer is always considered a far more suitable test opener than a Gambhir. The examples of Jayasuriya, Tendulkar, Gilchrist and others at the top of the order in ODI's has changed that completely for the limited overs game with the result that the exact reverse is considered true for the one day game. A Jaffer is, hence a complete misfit in the shorter version. So goes conventional logic.
The fact that this cant be an absolute truth doesnt seem to matter much unless a dasher makes it to opening in tests due to shortage od options or a stodgy batsman like Atapattu does the same in the shorter game for similar reasons and produces reasonable success. And even then this is, in some corner of the head, put down to an exception to the rule rather than an acceptabe new way of looking at opening.
And so we and, more importantly, the selectors will continue to think. Its easy to agree with this thinking, and I do, but the tragedy is that it may, at times make us miss an exciting option like another Mushtaq Ali or a Sehwag in the making for tests and never truly appreciate the fantastic value of a Merchant, with his masterly placement of the ball, uncanny judgement for singles, the pure cricketing strokes to never slacken the run rate even if never being explosive and of being the player around him a him a HUGE total can be built in match after match.
