5 Similarities between current Indian team and the Windies of 1980s

4. Openers who complement each other

Windies had Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, unarguably the best opening pair in Test history. It is well known that cricket is a game of partnerships may it be while batting, bowling or fielding. Windies opening pair as the most successful, stitching partnerships consistently and thus providing the team with an ideal start. Excellent players of pace, thanks to all the net practice that their own bowling greats offered, Haynes and Greenidge often slammed new ball attacks with ranked disdain.

Both hailing from Barbados, the duo has similar batting records, Greenidge making 7558 runs in 108 Tests with 19 centuries and Haynes making 7487 runs in 116 Tests with 18 centuries, which shows how nicely they complemented each other. Whereas in ODIs the latter was slightly ahead amassing 8648 runs in 238 ODIs and his partner scored 5134 runs in 128 ODIs. In 148 Test innings, the pair has scored 6482 runs with 16-century partnerships with the highest being 298.

India has a pair of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan in ODIs who have performed amazingly well for the Men in Blue. They recently became the second most successful opening pair for India in terms of the number of century partnerships with 14 hundred runs partnership to their name surpassing Sachin-Sehwag pair(13) and are one shy of Gordon Greenidge- Desmond Haynes (15).

The openers have provided Kohli’s team with the all-important solid start which is why India is enjoying most of the success of late. Both compliment each other, just like the Windies duo, and score a huge amount of runs for their team. The pair, since 2013, has added more than 4000 runs together thus becoming only the fourth opening pair to do so besides Sachin Tendulkar-Sourav Ganguly, Adam Gilchrist-Matthew Hayden, and Gordon Greenidge- Desmond Haynes.