CWC 2019: Ranking the opening combination for each team
The biggest cricket tournament in the world ‘ICC Cricket World Cup’ is scheduled to begin from 30 May in England. The cricket boards of all the teams participating in the tourney have announced their 15-member squad which can be modified by 23rd of this month. This World Cup is expected to be a high scoring tournament as conditions in England have been batting-friendly in recent times.
The openers who set the platform for other batsmen of the team become crucial in high scoring matches. Scoring at a quick run rate in middle overs would be easy for teams if they get a good start by top-order batsmen in powerplay. England has the best run-rate in middle overs since World Cup 2015. And, this is why they have been able to score 300+ scores for 37 times since World Cup 2015. Besides discussing the opening pair of each team, we have ranked teams on the basis of their opening combination.
10. Sri Lanka:
Sri Lanka has named a strange squad for this World Cup. Dimuth Karunaratne who played his last ODI match on 1 March 2015 is their captain and will be probably one of the openers. The other opener for 1996 World Champions is expected to be either Avishka Fernando or Lahiru Thirimanne. Their opening combination is the weakest among all the teams in the World Cup.
9. Afghanistan:
The opening pair for Afghanistan is not settled for the World Cup. Mohammad Shahzad will be one of the openers but the opener at the other end would be a topic of discussion. Hazratullah Zazai and Noor Ali Zadran are the possible partners of Shahzad. The duo of Shahzad and Zadran has opened for Afghanistan till 2017 and had a decent average of about 33.