All Out Cricket's Discussion Of The Week - What is the best opening partnership in the history of Test cricket?

Today on www.alloutcricket.com Rohan Kallicharan remembers the brilliance of Gordon Greenidge , and assesses his impact on the modern era.

http://www.alloutcricket.com/blogs/comment/gordon-greenidge-west-indies-cricket

Greenidge and Haynes formed one of the game's most formidable opening partnerships, so for this week's discussion, we want to know who you think was the very best at the top of the order.

Hobbs & Sutcliffe
Hayden & Langer

I use to like Taylor & Slater. One a gritty leftie, the other a dasher.

Got to be Hobbs and Sutcliffe who averaged something ridiculous like 87. You could argue the bowling was not that wonderful then, although a lot of their best collaborations were against the Aussies, sometimes on fearful stickies.
Greenidge and Haynes have to be considered as do Hayden and Langer. Older posters might make a case for Lawry and Simpson (a good left and right combination).
Mohsin Khan and Mudassar were fairly handy and Sehwag and almost anybody make an attractive pair.
One couple that could have done with a longer time together was Boycott and Barber who led off with 234 in an Ashes match once. Real tortoise and hare stuff.

Rohan - a fine tribute to a wonderful batsman.

My Test match watching goes back to the late 1960s. Greenidge and Haynes are the best opening partnership I've seen in that time. Of the two, Greenidge was the superior batsman (as Haynes has readily and publicly acknowledged) but Haynes was still an excellent and under rated foil.

Two factors certainly aided these two and I think it's right to flag them.

Firstly, they obviously never had to face the ferocious pace attack of their fellow West Indians - Holding, Marshall, Roberts and Garner.

Secondly, each had the psychological edge (unlike, say, India's Sunny Gavaskar or New Zealand's Glenn Turner) of knowing that should they fail, it was hardly the end of the world. How could it be with the likes of Richards, Lloyd, Gomes and your dad still to come?

However, it wasn't these factors that made Greenidge and Haynes a great partnership. That would have been the case anyway. These factors merely enhanced their greatness.

The greatness of Greenidge owes so much to his near perfect balance and judgment of concentration and destruction together with the confidence that must have come from batting alongside such a dependable opener as Haynes. As stated in the AOC article, Greenidge's brilliance is now too often overlooked. He was in some ways unfortunate to be a contemporary and team mate of both Viv Richards and Barry Richards. Superb players who at the time and subsequently took many of the headlines that in normal circumstances would have belonged squarely and solely to Greenidge.

It is testament to Greenidge's greatness that, in fact, he didn't always play the supporting role to these two. Largely forgotten now, for example, that when Hants won the County Championship in 1973, Greenidge outscored his fellow opener Barry Richards and every other batsman that season as he amassed over 1,600 runs.

Don't think there's much doubt that Hobbs and Sutcliffe are the greatest opening partnership in test history.
But a few others good 'uns that haven't been mentioned so far might include Rae and Stollmeyer, Ponsford and Woodfull, Goddard and Barlow, Hutton and Washbrook and Gooch and Atherton.

Agree that the finest ever opening partnership would have to be Hobbs and Sutcliffe.

SirFred is right to highlight Simpson and Lawry. In my youth they seemed completely immovable.

Great article about Greenidge.

I know this is about Test partnerships, but the Greenidge and Barry Richards county pairing was really something. Has there ever been a more ATTRACTIVE pairing ? Imagine watching them for three or four hours. Hampshire would probably be well past 200 with both notching centuries.
Ponsford and Woodfull, as mentioned above, must have been a bowlers' nightmare. They reckon only the arrival of the King in 1930 at Lord's separated them, only for the Don (254 eventually) to come in and make 155 in about two-and-a-half hours.

Hobbs and Sutcliffe.

Taylor and Slater for me (going on who I've seen in my lifetime)

I'm obviously too young to comment on a lot of them but for me, Hayden and Langer

Except the Ashes 2003 of course