The strange death of the Test match opener

Denly and Burns set a series high for both sides yesterday – 27 – before being rapidly parted

It was a punch through the covers for three, well-placed but not particularly welltimed, and took England to 27 without loss here. Ordinarily, this was nothing remarkable at all. And yet in one sense, Joe Denly’s push was notable: it moved England to the highest opening partnership, from either side, in this series.

Naturally, three balls later, it was all over. All it took was a wide delivery from Pat Cummins, which could easily have been left safely alone. Instead, Denly thrashed his hands at the ball, picking out second slip.

It was an emblem of why that record opening stand this series is so inauspicious, and the average opening partnership this Test summer in England is just 11.95. That is the lowest since 1888, and the second-lowest of all time.

“It’s fair to say that wasn’t a half volley,” says Mark Ramprakash, England’s batting coach until this summer. “Either Denly misjudged how full the ball was or he was thinking ‘I need to try and score to put the pressure back on the bowlers’.”

Yet this was a situation completely immune from any run-rate pressure. It was the first morning on a ground that appeared the best batting pitch of the entire summer. England, in any case, were already scoring more than three runs an over.

During the tour of the West Indies at the start of the year, Joe Root “talked a lot about putting the pressure back on the bowlers”, Ramprakash recalls. “I got the impression it was about scoring quickly but if the bowlers bowled

‘They are struggling with the skills of playing the ball late, backing defence and batting time’

six good balls do you then try and hit the seventh if it’s on a good line and length? You need to be really precise in Test cricket.”

In the first 10 overs this calendar year, England have left only 26 per cent of deliveries. From 2009-11 – when they beat Australia 3-1 away, defeated India 4-0 at home and rose to world No1 – they left 31 per cent of balls in the first 10 overs, a salient difference that speaks to a distinct shift in mindset. “Players are struggling with the skills of playing the ball late, backing their defence, batting periods of time,” Ramprakash believes.

That philosophy has been detectable, too, in team selection. Before his final Test, head coach Trevor Bayliss lamented that he regretted not explaining more clearly to the media what he meant by playing positive cricket. But Bayliss has had a long-standing preference for having two attacking players in the top three, which most recently manifested itself in the selection of Jason Roy, discarded at the Oval after five ignominious Tests this summer.

Roy’s selection, while generally welcomed after his white-ball exploits, came in spite of the salutary statistic that over his first-class career – most of which he has been safely shielded from the new ball – he has been dismissed every 46 balls. That is over twice as frequently as Dom Sibley, who lasts an average of 94 balls per innings, but has a first-class strike rate of only 41.

Yet none of this obscures that England’s opening strife is merely an extreme version of a global trend. The world over, Test averages are plunging, and openers are the first to experience this descent. Overall, the average opening partnership has plummeted from 40 in 2011 to just 27 since the start of 2018.

If less durable techniques are part of this story, so is the surfeit of outstanding new-ball bowlers. Opening has simply become harder, regardless of who is doing it. “This is a different playing field to 10 or 15 years ago,” Ramprakash asserts: “The data suggests that the ball has moved more prodigiously in the last three-to-four years.”

Worldwide, more balls are landing on a good line and length in the first 10 overs of Test innings of this year since Cricviz’s data began in 2005.

Such meticulous accuracy is augmented by ample seam movement – though, in this series, new ball swing has been notably down on previous years.

Either way, the conclusion is inescapable. “We may need to rethink our view of what is a successful top-order batsman in terms of the end product,” Ramprakash says, adding that an average of 30 in England now represents a solid return.

Indeed, even with a Test average a tick below 30, Rory Burns has already been the most successful of the 15 Test opening batsmen England have tried since Andrew Strauss retired seven years ago. For Test openers, the game has changed. Now, so must our very idea of what success looks like.