Contributions made by openers

In a couple of previous posts, Partnerships that made big contributions" and A different kind of hundred partnership I looked at a different way of measuring the impact of a partnership.

I used the method from the contributions post to look at opening partnerships in this world cup. There have been a couple of outstanding partnerships this time round, not least of which was the innings by Dilshan and Tharanga of 282 vs Zimbabwe at Pallekele.

Here is the list of all partnerships that contributed 100 or more:

Names	For	Against	Runs	Contribution
TM Dilshan, WU Tharanga	SL	vs Zimbabwe	282	307
BJ Haddin, SR Watson	Aus	vs Canada	183	246
WTS Porterfield, PR Stirling	Ire	vs Netherlands	177	241
MJ Guptill, BB McCullum	NZ	vs Zimbabwe	166	217
V Sehwag, SR Tendulkar	India	vs South Africa	142	201
BJ Haddin, SR Watson	Aus	vs New Zealand	133	189
Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Hafeez	Pak	vs West Indies	113	180
RW Chakabva, BRM Taylor	Zim	vs Sri Lanka	116	165
KP Pietersen, AJ Strauss	Eng	vs Netherlands	105	149
CH Gayle, DS Smith	WI	vs Netherlands	100	141
HM Amla, GC Smith	SA	vs Bangladesh	98	139
MJ Guptill, BB McCullum	NZ	vs Kenya	72	139
KP Pietersen, AJ Strauss	Eng	vs Ireland	91	125
S Chanderpaul, DS Smith	WI	vs Ireland	89	124
TM Dilshan, WU Tharanga	SL	vs Pakistan	76	105

A couple of names appear there more than once. Dilshan & Tharanga, Haddin & Watson, Guptil & McCullum and, despite often looking as comfortable as a pin in the bottom, Devon Smith.

That leads to the next obvious question: Which country has got the most value from their openers. Here's the list sorted by country and average contribution. (for this average I am dividing by innings, not dismissals, as there is already a bonus for getting a not out)

Team	Contribution
Aus	104.33
SL	99.00
NZ	78.17
Eng	75.50
India	68.29
SA	62.67
WI	57.14
Ire	45.00
Zim	38.00
Ban	31.67
Neth	27.14
Kenya	11.83
Can	10.00

There's some obvious distortion in these numbers caused by the ability of some teams at minnow bashing. The usual suspects for beating up on minnows (NZ, SA, India and SL) all feature high on the chart. I will at some point produce a table that removes games against lesser teams, but the pub is calling.

Happy World Cup watching everyone.