Gifted strokeplayers like Saeed Anwar, Aamir Sohail were told to graft. Skipper Imran promoted himself to the strategic number three position and batted solidly. This policy was successful in the crucial last league tie against Australia, the semifinal against New Zealand and the final against England. Pakistan lost only two or three wickets by the 35th over and the final assault was brilliantly carried out by the genius, Javed Miandad and the rookie star, Inzamam-ul-Haq.

But cricket strategy, particularly in one-day cricket, is constantly changing. Soon after the World Cup and the retirement of Imran Khan, Pakistan went back, quite successfully to the old slam-bang tactics. Saeed Anwar and Aamir Sohail played their strokes from ball one and runs gushed forth during the first 15 overs. And today, Pakistan is fortunate to have discovered yet another genius, the 16-year old Shahid Afridi, who recently broke Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya's records for the fastest 50 and 100 in limited-overs cricket. Afridi is now all set to take over the opener's slot from Aamir Sohail, and the AnwarAfridi combination may turn out to be more devastating than the explosive Lankan duo, Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana.

The pinch-hitting approach of the Sri Lankans, which they formulated while touring Australia in 1995, had revolutionised batting in one-day cricket. Prior to that, most nations preferred to let their openers and middle order batsmen settle down and then go full steam ahead during the final ten slog overs. But with Sri Lanka treating the first 15 overs as the slog overs, the other nations were tempted to follow suit. India did it briefly, with Sachin Tendulkar promoted to open the innings against New Zealand and going full blast. But unlike the Sri Lankans, India did not have the consistent batting strength down the order. If Tendulkar got out cheaply, the rest of the team collapsed. Today, despite occasionally promoting Srinath to the number three slot, the Indian approach had been normalised with Tendulkar forced to adopt the sheet anchor role. What the Indians appear to be missing is someone like Krish Srikkanth, who was a one-man demolition squad against even the very best attacks in the world! Today, we do not have a settled opening pair, let alone a pinch hitter.

Even the greatest opening pair in international cricket, West Indians Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, did not go in for pinch hitting. I do not remember them scoring at the same hectic pace as the Sri Lankan openers. But Haynes and Greenidge were no slouches and, with a judicious mixture of big hits and singles and twos, they managed a rate of four or five an over. This was quite enough considering the fact that the batsmen to follow included strokemakers like Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd. Today, the West Indians have no settled opening pair and have tried out even wicketkeeper Courtney Browne as an opening pinch hitter, a move which did not click. Of course, with Brian Lara batting at number three, the Windies can accelerate at will when Lara is in full flow. But they have really not mastered the pinch hitting technique.

The Australians and the South Africans do not go berserk as the Sri Lankans. Their approach is smoother and better planned. For Australia, skipper Mark Taylor can never slog but Mark Waugh, without much effort, can lift the scoring rate to astronomical heights without resorting to the ugly cross-batted heaves of Kaluwitharana. But whenever Mark Waugh fails, the Australians get stuck and I wonder if Tayor has thought of pushing himself down and promoting Stuart Law to open with Waugh. Law, like Waugh, is a classy player, who can really tear apart any attack.

The South Africans revealed for the first time during the 1996 World Cup that their low-profile openers, Gary Kirstein and Andrew Hudson, were no slouches. In fact, they caned the famed Pakistani attack consisting of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Aaqib Javed so furiously that the home team simply gave in. Since then, the South Africans, despite losing to the West Indies in the World Cup quarter-final and to India in the Titan Cup final, have gone from success to success. Kirstein and Hudson had proved themselves capable of scoring at a hectic pace. The South African skipper, Hanse Cronje, seemed to follow the system of pinch hitters because he often promoted big hitter Pat Symcox to the number three spot. Of late, the South Africans have the best record in one-day cricket, but I would love to see them chase a target of around 270-odd against the Australians, Sri Lankans or the Pakistanis.

Since the decline of Mark Greatbatch and the premature retirement of Martin Crowe, New Zealand had reached the nadir of their cricketing fortunes. Of course, it was Crowe who promoted the beefy Greatbatch to open the innings and ordered him to go for the bowling. England is too inconsistent in its approach to focus on pinch hitting techniques and flopped miserably in the 1996 World Cup.

Of course, there can be no consistent approach to such batting techniques and each side has to formulate its own strategy. If a side did not have the players of the caliber of Jayasurya, Saeed Anwar or Mark Waugh, the best strategy is to go along at the rate of around 4.5 runs an over and then lash out during the last ten overs. But no batting side can dawdle early on, hoping that things could be rectified during the slog overs. Wickets may tumble and the entire strategy of reserving everything towards the end may boomerang. It is the duty of the openers and the middle order batsmen to avoid falling into such a trap which puts great pressure on the batsmen to follow. Pakistan lost out to an inferior Australian team in the 1987 semi-final at Lahore because the earlier batsmen were too slow. Miandad and Imran were left with the job of scoring eight an over a long stretch of overs and when Imran was given out, the team had no chance.