IPL 2019: 4 players who should be promoted to open the innings
As the Indian Premier League is nearing, the franchises have started to ponder about what they need to squeeze out of their resources. The teams will look to make their sides as balanced as possible.
In an attempt to attain the above, the sides might experiment with their batting order so as get the right combination in place. We've observed that in the last season as well where Ambati Rayudu, Jos Buttler, Suryakumar Yadav were promoted to open the innings and they wreaked havoc to the opposition bowling lineups.
The most effective of them all was a couple of years ago when Kolkata Knight Riders made a golden move by promoting Sunil Narine to open the innings and what followed was very fruitful for them.
In the upcoming edition as well, these five players can be pushed up the batting order to fully utilize their capabilities.
#4 Ishan Kishan
Ishan Kishan is one of the emerging Indian wicketkeeper-batsmen, who led India U-19 in the 2016 World Cup. He made his IPL debut in 2016 for Gujarat Lions under the leadership of Suresh Raina. After the exit of GL from the scheme of things, the youngster was scalped by Mumbai Indians for INR 6.2 crores at the mega-auction ahead of the 2018 season.
The left-hander has played 30 IPL matches and scored 594 runs at a strike rate of 137. He went on to score three half-centuries in the process.
The 20-year-old mostly batted in the middle order for Mumbai Indians and on various occasions, he slipped down the order to make way for the hard-hitters like Keiron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Hardik Pandya as the situation demanded.
With the technique that Kishan has, he can surely make use of the powerplay and build his innings as an opener under lesser pressure while the big guns can operate in the middle.