The IPL, over the years, has been a breeding ground not just for talented youngsters, but also for innovation and experimentation. T20 is a format which requires you to come up with extensive strategies and match ups and also think on your feet during the game.
While the initial seasons saw a number of switch hits and slower balls coming into play, the teams with every season have pushed the boundaries to think out of the box to come up with fresh ideas that could take the opposition by surprise.
A concept which gained a lot of traction was that of pinch hitters. It required bowlers who could bat decently to play fearless cricket and try to accumulate runs quickly for the batting team. The logic behind it was that the loss of the bowler’s wicket wouldn’t cost much to the team as well. While it wasn’t a new concept, a number of teams started taking a liking towards it and you had a number of teams promoting bowlers who could bat aggressively, up the order to try and gain some momentum in the game.
While most teams promoted the bowlers to numbers three and four, there were a few teams who asked their bowlers to directly open the innings. Sunil Narine has been one of the biggest gainers of this move and having discovered the batsman in himself, he and has now established himself as a destructive opener. However, not each bowler, tried as an opener, possessed the talent of Narine and hence most of them failed to make a mark.
Here we look at four bowlers who unsuccessfully opened the batting in IPL:
1. Praveen Kumar
Praveen Kumar was always a player who could hang around with the bat and was capable of hitting a few lusty blows down the order. But the cricketing world was shocked when in a match against Delhi Daredevils in 2008, Kumar, playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore was promoted to open the batting. He had to face the master, Glenn McGrath in his very first over, who was perhaps one of the hardest bowlers to face upfront even for a mainstream batsman.
But Kumar raised excitement levels as he smashed McGrath for a boundary on the 2nd ball. After two dots, the Aussies legend decided it was time for the fun to end and dismissed Kumar on the 5th ball and he walked back to the pavilion having scored six runs of five balls. If once wasn’t good enough, the experiment was tried yet again the next year in 2009, when the IPL was held in South Africa.
Kumar was made to open the batting against Chennai Super Kings chasing 180. This time, he couldn’t even get off the mark, being duly dismissed by Manpreet Gony for duck off three balls. After that the experiment to try the pacer from Uttar Pradesh as an opener was never tried again.
