The Liton question at opening

Liton Das was the only batter for Bangladesh to score some runs in their embarrassing defeat to South Africa on Thursday, but is the right-handed batter being wasted at number three?

Liton managed 34 against South Africa from 31 balls, but he neither looked fluent nor flamboyant as he played anchor in a Bangladesh innings that was crashing.

In T20s, it has been a shared philosophy that the best batter of the team should play as many balls as possible. Thus, Jos Buttler opens for England instead of his lower-order position in One-Day Internationals, and Virat Kohli has also opened in franchise cricket.

But since Sridharan Sriram took charge of the T20 side, Liton has been employed at number three instead of his regular position at the top of the innings.

He hasn’t done badly as his scores have been 13 (8), 25 (20), 35 (26), 15 (16), 23 (16), 69 (42), 9 (11), and 34 (31). But as he has shown in ODIs, his best batting position in Twenty20 Internationals also continues to be as an opener, which is backed by data.

As an opener, Liton has played 41 innings, where he has faced 634 balls to score 842 runs at an average of 21.05 and a strike rate of 132.8. He has five fifties to his name and has hit 85 fours and 30 sixes. This means as an opener, Liton has roughly hit a boundary every five and a half balls.

On the other hand, in his 20 innings not as an opener, Liton has scored 462 runs in 396 balls. While his average rises slightly to 23.10, his strike rate drops drastically to 116.66. He also has only two fifties in these 20 innings and has hit 42 fours and nine sixes in those. This means while not opening, Liton hits a boundary every 7.76 deliveries.

As the stats suggest, Liton’s performances drop, at least in T20 standards, when he is not opening. His deployment a little later has been reasoned as to deal with spinners and find gaps in the middle overs, but except for an innings here and there, Liton has struggled more in the middle than at the top.

Liton is also ahead by some distance when compared to the two openers that have been playing in the T20 World Cup so far. Soumya Sarkar has an average of 18.53 with a strike rate of 124.01 while playing at the top, while Najmul Hossain averages only 13.87 and has a sluggish strike rate of 103.73.

While the opening pair of Soumya and Najmul brought Bangladesh a good start against Netherlands in their opening game (43 in 5.1 overs), they failed against South Africa after the first over, where Najmul hit a four and Soumya hit a brace of sixes.

But yet, Bangladesh will continue with the pair and Liton at three in their upcoming match against Zimbabwe, especially because they don’t have any other opener in their squad.

When Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan was asked before the start of the T20 World Cup regarding putting Liton as an opener, he went into an aggressive mode.

“Do you think we will win just if Liton opens? The way you’re saying it, you (the journalist asking the question) should be kept among the decision-makers,” the Bangladesh captain said.

Liton holds an impressive record against Zimbabwe as an opener. In his seven innings opening against the African side, Liton scored 277 runs in his seven innings, averaging 46.16 with a strike rate of 155.61.

But yet, he might once again come at number three against Zimbabwe at Brisbane. If he can hit another fifty there as he did against New Zealand, it will be all merry well.

But if the openers fail again like they did against South Africa and so does Liton at number three, the question will keep reappearing whether it was the right call to send the statistically best T20 opener down the order.