Cricket: England's One Day Problems - The Openers

Yesterday, Michael Vaughan's test side sealed an expected series victory over New Zealand. A Black Caps series win was not ancitipated and, had they won, Vaughan's reign as captain would have been put in serious jeopardy by the failure to beat such a weak team.

Yet, almost inexplicably, New Zealand are heavy favourites for the upcoming one-day series.

There is no doubt that the Kiwis are a decent one-day side, but there can also be little doubt that England are poor in this version of the game.

Since the ascension of Paul Collingwood to the one-day captaincy position, England have produced a somewhat mixed bag of results. Unexpected series wins over strong Indian and Sri Lankan sides have been soured by unforeseen defeats to the West Indies and New Zealand.

The general consensus is, however, that the team is moving in the right direction under its new leadership. But there are still problems, the first of which is the opening pair.

There is no doubt that the opening pairing at the 2007 world cup of Ed Joyce and Michael Vaughan was not good enough, with the major criticism being that they did not take advantage of the power plays.

Since then, the trend has been to include a "pinch hitter" at the top of the order to score fast runs. This has most recently been the wicket keepers, Matt Prior and Phil Mustard.

However, I believe both openers should be big hitters rather than just one.

If we look at the top one-day sides in the world, how many play conservative batsmen as openers?

Australia's success for years has been predicated on the big runs of openers Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden. Justin Langer, a fine, conservative batsman, played 105 test matches for Australia but only 8 ODI's. They selected the best batsmen for each form of the game.

South Africa play two aggressive batsmen, often Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs (although he is considering retirement), New Zealand's opening pair of Jesse Ryder and Brendon McCullum were a thorn in the side of England in the winter.

So why persist with Alastair Cook? A man with one century to his name in one day cricket in more than 20 innings.

He simply isn't a one day player and must be replaced.

Luke Wright is likely to open with Cook in the upcoming series against New Zealand.

Wright has shown glimpses of what he can do, with his four innings so far for England producing 50, 0, 24 and 47. His duck came the only time he opened, though, as the other scores were gained when he batted at 7.

I don't think we can read too much into this, though, and giving him another opportunity to open is the right thing to do. He is aggressive, possesses an unusual batting style and could well be the answer to half of England's opening problem.

But he will need to start getting big scores as an opener. England's greatest ever one day player, Marcus Trescothick, was so good precisely because he was capable not only of scoring fast, but scoring big.

England won't have a one-day team capable of rivalling the best until they find openers who can do this.