In this article, check out the top 5 openers in test cricket who scored the highest runs. Alaister Cook currently holds this record.
5. Virender Sehwag
Virender Shewag is a Test cricket legend in Indian cricket to say the least. He played 104 tests for India and made a whopping 8536 runs with an average of over 49. He smashed 23 hundreds all big, fast and entertaining which also paved the way for a new look on how Test cricket could be played. As an opener he made 8207 runs. He is a very destructive batsmen in test cricket. He has a very high strike rate which is very difficult in test cricket but maintains that very well throughout his career.
4. Matthew Hayden
Matthew Hayden’s aggression did not extend to the Test arena. While he flayed bowlers in the shorter format, he was quite docile in the longer run, preferring to play “ugly cricket”. Large, beefy and extremely destructive, he played more than 100 test matches in his career in which he scores more than 8000 runs which is very high in figure he has very good strike rate and he has batting average of 50 and he made 30 century in his career and 29 fifty which shows how good batsman he was, his top score was 380 only 20 runs short for 400.
3. Graeme Smith
Graeme Smith didn’t play long for South Africa. He played 117 tests for the Proteas, scored over 9000 runs and smashed 27 centuries with an average of 48. Before Hashim Amla he was the highest run scorer for SA in a Test match with 277. The double centuries Smith scored in his 11th and 12th Tests, and just his third and fourth as captain, in England in 2003 made for an ironclad argument to retain his overtly direct approach to getting the job done. Those were his early days in charge, but arguably his greatest triumph came much later, when he led South Africa to their first Test series victory in Australia in 2008-09. In 2014, he retired following a series loss to Australia at home leaving a great legacy.
2. Sunil Gavaskar
His game was built around a near-perfect technique and enormous powers of concentration. It is hard to visualize a more beautiful defence; virtually unbreachable, it made his wicket among the hardest to earn. Sunil Gavaskar was the first to get 10,000 Test runs and 30 centuries. India’s lynchpin of the 70s and 80s, and arguably their first great batsman, he was known for his immaculate defence but was equally at ease hooking and pulling the most fearsome bowlers of all time. He played 125 test matches scoring over 10,122 runs and 34 centuries with an average of 51.33. As an opener he made 9607 runs for India.
1. Alastair Cook
This English Captain had recently crossed the 10,000 run mark in Test Cricket and became the youngest one to do so, breaking Sachin Tendulkar’s record. And yesterday, on Day 2 of the first test against Pakistan, he scored 81 runs taking his overall tally to 9610 runs as an opener, surpassing the great Sunil Gavaskar and he now leads the charts. Those who knew him were saying that the tall, dark and handsome Alastair Cook was destined for great things very early on, and on the Ashes tour of 2010-11, he came good on a host of promises, scoring an incredible 766 runs in seven innings to anchor England’s first series win in Australia for 24 years.
