Top 10 most prolific left handed openers in ODI cricket
Over the last three decades, one-day cricket has brought about a complete change in how the gentleman’s game is played. Teams have started playing cricket with an aggressive mindset to draw results in their favour.
Batting was no longer confined to just seeing off sessions and playing out attacks. Batsmen were instructed to score runs at a brisk pace and help their teams set daunting targets.
Openers became a key asset to any team’s batting order and had a clear-cut role to provide the initial thrust up the order and establish a strong platform for the middle order to build upon. Over the years, many quality openers have enthralled audiences with their scintillating stroke play in white ball cricket.
The likes of Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Ganguly, Sehwag and Gilchrist come straight to mind when we think of world class openers. While a majority of openers have been right-handers, lefties too have been second to none in booking a place among the elite list of ODI openers.
So let us have a look at the most prolific left-handed openers in ODI cricket:
In this analysis, we have only considered those batsmen who played as openers for the majority of their ODI careers. Batsmen who have scored above 4000 runs as openers have been considered for this list. For ranking the batsmen, run-scoring pedigree, ability to score tons and strike rates have been considered as the main parameters.
#10 Shikhar Dhawan
Shikhar Dhawan has been one of the best openers in ODI cricket for over the last five years. Dhawan is an aggressive batsman who likes to take on the bowlers in the power plays. ‘Gabbar’ launches an early onslaught against bowlers and then looks to play the run accumulator's role as the innings progresses.
Dhawan has been pretty consistent for India amassing over 4000 runs at a healthy average of nearly 45. Much of India’s success in recent times has been built around a stable opening partnership of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan.
Shikhar Dhawan Record as an Opener
Matches: 104; Runs: 4481; Avg: 45.72; 100s: 13