Top 10 opening batsmen in ODIs at the moment
Mark Greatbatch (in the 1992 World Cup), Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitrana (both during the 1996 World Cup) can be credited with redefining the role of openers in limited-overs cricket. Since then, the art of opening has come a long way, and it has become one of the most important positions in a team.
The main job of an opening batsman is to make use of the field restriction overs and get the team off to a flying start. Nowadays, we have openers who like to start off slowly and make up for the slow start when they settle in.
Note: Batting average since January 1, 2015, have been taken into account in ranking the batsmen from 1-10. Batsmen with at least 25 innings have been considered. Tillakaratne Dilshan deserved to feature on the list with an average of over 47 in 28 innings but he has not been included because he is not actively playing anymore
#10 Tom Latham
After a long time, New Zealand have found a settled opening combination in ODIs in the form of Martin Guptill and Tom Latham. Having said that, Latham was not a part of the Kiwi playing XI during the 2017 Champions Trophy.
In spite of that, he features on the list of top 10 ODI openers at the moment, thanks to his brilliance over the last couple of years. With Guptill taking on the bowling attack, Latham's role is to anchor the innings and he does it perfectly.
The left-hander has scored 1110 runs in 21 innings at an average of 38.27 and a strike-rate of 84 in the period and gets a place on the list ahead of the likes of Jason Roy and Soumya Sarkar.
Latham should try and improve his scoring rate and look to rotate the strike in the middle-overs to keep the scorecard moving if he wants to feature in the team's plans in the future.