As Steve Smith gets ready to open the batting for Australia in Test cricket, here is a look at other middle-order batters who have made similar moves in the past.

105 Tests, 9,514 runs, and 32 hundreds into his career, Steve Smith will open the batting in Test cricket for the first time in his career. George Bailey, Australia’s chair of selectors, confirmed that this will not be a “stop gap arrangement”.

However, Smith will not be the first middle-order who have taken on the unenviable role of the Test match opener. Here is a non-exhaustive list of 21st-century cricketers who have done the same. They do not include temporary experiments like Mahela Jayawardene or Ben Stokes or, perhaps most famously, Morne Morkel.

Mark Ramprakash: A home series against Zimbabwe was an excellent opportunity for such experiments. Nine years into his career, Ramprakash made 56 in his second Test match as opener but was demoted after a run of 18, 0, 0, 2 against Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.

Virender Sehwag: Sehwag scored a hundred down the order on Test debut, but it was difficult for him to cement a place in a middle order consisting of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, and Sourav Ganguly. With assurance of a long rope from Ganguly, Sehwag agreed to open, and started with 84 and 27 at Lord’s and 106 at Trent Bridge in his new role, and never looked back. Only five men have more Test runs as an opener.

Stephen Fleming: After nine years of batting in the middle order and seven years into his career as Test captain, Fleming made 274 not out in the first innings at the P Sara Oval and decided to open batting in the second innings. Perhaps buoyed by the unbeaten 69, he opened in England in 2004 and made a hundred at Trent Bridge, but moved down the order towards the end of his career.

Shoaib Malik: Malik’s peculiar career as Test opener began three years after he debuted in the format. Exactly why they discarded the plan is unclear, for he reached double figure 10 times in 11 innings at the top. He batted for over eight hours to make 148 and save a Test match at the SSC – and never opened again.

Rahul Dravid: After the early occasional foray at the top in his early days, Dravid settled at one-drop, where he batted for the most of his Test career. However, after being appointed captain in end-2005, he decided to pair Sehwag in the absence of a second regular opener, and started with consecutive hundreds on the Pakistan tour. Gautam Gambhir’s arrival allowed him to drop back to three, but he returned in the 2011 England tour as opener. There, at the Oval, he became the third Indian to carry his bat in a completed Test innings.

Dinesh Karthik: After being kept out – the pun is unintended – of the XI by MS Dhoni, Karthik found a way back as Test opener in the pre-Gambhir period when India dropped Sehwag for some time. He opened the batting in eight Test matches (and kept wicket in only one of these). His only hundred came at Mirpur in 2007, when both Karthik and his opening partner Wasim Jaffer retired hurt, enabling India put on 408 in what was technically a first-wicket stand.

Simon Katich: Among Australian Test openers, only Bobby Simpson and Matthew Hayden have more runs than Katich at a better average. The role came to him seven years into his international career, and he responded by averaging at least forty in all six countries he opened the batting in – a feat neither Hayden nor Justin Langer nor David Warner can boast of.

Shane Watson: Like Katich, with whom he opened the batting for some time, Watson’s average (40.98) as opener was higher than what it was in the middle order (30.03). Having Watson at the top enabled Australia to play five bowlers for some time. At Lord’s in 2013, he became the first cricketer since Trevor Bailey in 1954/55 to open both batting and bowling in the same Ashes Test match.

Brendon McCullum: With just over an hour’s cricket left, Fleming promoted a debuting McCullum to open to play out time in 2004. He was back to the top after relinquishing the gloves, where he made two double hundreds, against India and Pakistan, separated by four years. However, he did this intermittently, often batting at five.

Jonathan Trott: Barring the Mirpur Test match – the seventh of his career – Trott had never opened batting until he left Australia mid-series in 2013/14. When he returned for the West Indies tour, in 2015, it was as one of Alastair Cook’s many opening partners. He made 72 in six innings (including a 59), and never played for England again.

Cheteshwar Pujara: Unlike the others on this list, Pujara’s six-Test stint at the top came in various ‘installments’, some of them lasting a solitary Test match. At the SSC in 2015, he followed Dravid – the man he is sometimes compared to – in becoming the fourth Indian to carry his bat. Dropped from the Test side in 2022, he earned a place back with mountains of runs in the County Championship. Asked to open in his return match, at Edgbaston, he top-scored in the second innings with 66.

Moeen Ali: Yet another of Cook’s many opening partners, Moeen took up the role during the 2015/16 series against Pakistan. It was too much to expect of England’s senior-most spinner – Adil Rashid debuted in the same Test – and the experiment was dropped after he made 84 runs in six innings.

Azhar Ali: Azhar rendered yeoman services to the Pakistan Test side throughout the 2010s, and opened the batting 37 times under three captains at various points of time. Among Pakistan openers, Saeed Anwar has scored more runs at a higher average than Azhar’s 45.76, while his unbeaten 302 against the West Indies at Dubai in 2016/17 was the first triple-hundred in a day-night Test.

Usman Khawaja: In nearly 147 years of Test cricket, only Herbert Sutcliffe averages more than Khawaja’s 57.40 at the top if one uses a thousand-run cut-off. Khawaja made 145 in his first innings as opener, five years after his Test debut, and made 79 not out, 85, and 141 in his next three, none of which was enough to help him cement a place in the side at any position in the batting order. Since getting a permanent run, that begun in 2022, Khawaja has made over 2,000 runs at the top at 52.47. What if he had got the run he deserved earlier in his career?

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