I often wonder about this myself. Most successful opening LHB are either very dangerous on or able to "nurdle" consistently off their legs. When you combine this with the obvious LBW advantages you receive when facing RH bowlers it means in general, it’s hard to bowl straight to them. New ball bowling usually involves a good deal of attacking the stumps. When new ball right arm fast bowler attacks the stumps of a RHB I believe there are fewer margins for batsmen error. As a opening LHB myself I always found facing a good left arm bowler gave me more worries with LBW and bowled dismissals especially with a swinging new ball. Whereas with a right arm bowler unless he is swinging the ball back I feel I only have to cover his line and avoid nicks. I think in general, the percentage of LHB naturally follows the percentage of RH opening bowlers.

Simple. Most opening bowlers are right handers and therefor swing it away from right-handers, and into left-handers. Generally speaking any batsmen prefers the ball to come in towards them,and dislikes the ball swinging or nipping towards the slips. Because of this, the in-swinging ball of a right arm opening bowler to a lefty can be neatly tucked off the legs, whereas the same outswing ball to a right-hander forces strokeplay away from the body, encouraging opportunities behind the wicket.

Good article, but I think you erred in saying that "Both countries’ left-handers also seem to be less wristy than the right-handers, preferring to flay the ball through the offside. ".
Anwar was far more wristy then any other contemporary batsman...I think it is self evident a left hander will be more proficient at playing on the off, because the angle created by the majority of bowlers, who are righthanders, affords the lefthanded batsman with more perceived width.

"Gambhir leads the Indian list now but I can’t think of too many more recent examples other than Sadagoppan Ramesh earlier in the decade."
Did u forget Ganguly who opened for so long in the ODIs?

You are right...BAN THEM!!! i think we should buy them an island and let them set up their own comp there. They play square, we have to change the field everytime they face, I have to bowl different lines..etc. etc. etc. But hey..I would have ten of them in my team if I could find them..
Nick

Left handers could be getting an advantage in lower grades of cricket as many bowlers are not used to bowling to them and they don't have good control. That slight advantage would be enough for a talented guy to take him to top. Maybe this advantage is even more when facing the new ball which is more difficult to control for lower grade bowlers. If the number of left handed batsmen is disproportionately high (as compared to their proportion in the population) then it is some proof for the above hypothesis.

Also, natural right handers who bat left handed have the advantage while driving but have a corresponding disadvantage while pulling / hooking and to lesser extent while cutting (specially the horizontal bat cut). The latter point can be seen very clearly in Ganguly's batting and also to a lesser extent in Robin Singh's batting.

hi.. this is just to point out a small mistake which has crept in. In the list of recent, left handed openers who have played amongst the Indian ranks, the name of Sourav Ganguly is missing. thanks....

I have a fairly easy reason - Righties are more common in lower level cricket than lefties. So bowlers at these levels find it easier to bowl to right handers than left handers, making life easier on the left handers. This allows left handers to gain more success through the ranks, and at the higher levels too as there are more right-handed bowlers than left-handed ones, and still more right-handed bats than lefties.

This leads to the left-handed players in general gaining more success due to their uniqueness, and so you usually find a lot of lefties on the international stage playing with success. Majority of the batsmen/bowlers the lefties face are used to playing against right handers, and so they are less effective against the left handers.

As a natural lefty who is a right handed opening bat, I've always been interested in this. Good article, I think the general consensus is correct. The different lines make it far easier for a left hander to deal with the swinging new ball. I must admit that I rue my right handed batting anytime I'm out early caught behind early off a big outswinger... what's that? Shot selection? Why would I blame that?

It would be interesting indeed to see if opening RHBs have better averages when facing LH opening bowlers.

Well, one only has to look at some RH openers who have done exceptionally well in the not-to-distant past. Sehwag, Gooch, Boycott, Gavaskar, B.Richards, G.Greenidge.
LH openers may get a slight advantage generally, but that will depend on the type of fast bowler he's facing.
The attacking-defensive opening pair is a better combo than a RH-LH combo of same ilk.
However, the best opening combo is a RH-defensive and LH-attacking bats.

Equally interesting is how few top quality left-arm bowlers there have been. Amongst quicks, Wasim was obviously in that bracket, as was Alan Davidson, but after then the quality declines. OK, Vaas is very good but not a great quick and the same could be said of Sobers. Bracken, Johnson and Zaheer Khan haven't done enough long enough to qualify either.

Spinners have a few more to their name but again, not up to scratch with their rind-hand counterparts. Underwood and Bedi stand out and Rhodes deserves mention but the rest haven't been quite as effective as the righties.

I am no expert in this...as I'm a RHB of very poor quality. However, in one game I played in 1991 the opposition overseas player was Alistair Campbell, the soon to be Zimbabwe captain. While a soft drink with him in the bar after the game (he was watching his weight as he wanted to get in the world cup squad)he explained to me that he was rigfht handed and he only changed to a left handed batsmen at the start of his teens on the advice of his father, who suggested it may give him an advantage against bowlers who were not used to LHB. There are many LHB who when bowling, turn out to be right handed; you do have to ask if they have done the same thing as Campbell did? It takes a talented man to switch his stance, thought pieterson has demonstrated it can be done in the middle of a shot. Brian Lara played golf right-handed so not to upset the rhythm of his batting technique.
My guess is that many of these LHB have made a calculated choice early in their careers to try gain any advantage

Anwar was good on but he was wristy as well. He could play anything on his pads as effectively as off. But yes there is a a reason to why players in subcontinent play like that. It is because this is how we are brought up to play .. there aren't many proper grounds so we play in streets that make a plus + sign so u can score straight or square. bc of the bowlers n fielders set up, it is easier to score on square sides especially on off.
it thus becomes an unintentional habit.

I pray to god that I'm born left handed in my next life. I tried to convert myself into one in this life albeit a bit late into my unprofessional cricketing career and I have to admit it felt a lot classy and the strokes on the off were a piece of cake but when the ball was banged in short the right side of the body would involuntarily take over to shield and duck and get away and try to twist the whole body around into a bloody mess while the head would command it to stay still and watch the ball.

Dude, you forgot the Sachin-Sourav ODI openers

Could it also be because of the role of the spinner? I would venture that it is, because in terms of frequency I'd suggest that there are more off spinners that there are leg spinners. Obviously the offie is more dangerous to a lhb because he turns the ball away. Hence if you have a lefty whom you deem vulnerable to spin put him up the order, as we know there are certain players who dislike starting their innings against spin.

Who knows maybe England should tell KP to give up batting right-handed and let him permanently switch hitting whilst opening the batting with Cook, then Strauss can nudge and nurdle Graham Thorpe like from #4!

Very good observation. The only thing that I would add is that the absence of left handed openers in India/Pakistan could be due to the dominance of spin in the subcontinent cricket.I dont know the statistics but if I assume that majority of the spinners are RH and offspinners , then it is more difficult for a LH batsman as opposed to a RH batsman. Hence, by theory of natural selection, a subcontinent batsman has more probability of success if he is RH. This explaination again assumes that swing is not important in subcontinent.
OR may be this whole thing has something to do with the Duke or kookaburra balls!!

Previously I have written to ask if some stats could be looked at on this subject and more..not just opening batsmen but the whole LH population of cricket teams, the % appears above the average of general population.Also,the % of LH bat AND RH throw or vice versa..ambidexterity has been rife in the Australian teams Michael Clarke eg.I like the idea of survival and honing of skills for lefties allowing them to progress given the sheer awkwardness of bowling to them- I suggest also they were picked up earlier and nurtured,identified as a half-there asset by coaches of the young, I know my daughter was as a centre-forward in Aus water polo team.
In fielding, true both handedness can reap rewards, or just a leftie roaming, hence the player was picked again...but why are they in this game and not so many in other sports? Beats me!

Apologies. I have indeed forgotten to add Ganguly to this list. His ODI record at the top is fantastic so I have no excuse - just old age!
Yes, Anwar was as wristy as you get but generally speaking, more left handed openers seem to be in the Jayasuriya/Ganguly/Gilchrist mode where they murder anything through the point region. When they hit leg side, it's not so much a wristy flick is it?
Curiously, the lefties who bat down the order aare much more wristy. Yuvraj, Sangakkara, Thorpe, Hashan Tillakaratne and a few others. Is this just coincidence or do they become wristy once the ball stops swinging as much? Lara of course was amazingly gifted in this regard and don't forget, he opened the batting in ODI's early in his career.
I also agree that LH bowlers, would be harder for lefties to face. The lbw suddenly comes into play much more.

The theory about the increased numbers of off-spinners in the subcontinent (therefore not favouring lefties) is an interesting one. It's a great theory but it doesn't really answer my original question about opening batsmen. I can understand why middle order batsmen will find this harder to deal with. It will be interesting to see if India and Pakistan produce less left-handers than the other countries (all batsmen, not just openers). If that is the case, perhaps it is because they have to counter a number of off-spinners and that is harder to deal with than for a RHB who can tuck him away through square leg. Mind you, with the advent of the doosra, no one's safe anymore!

There seem to be more "left" handed batsmen than ever at international level, regardless of what position they are batting. However, many (if not most) of these batsmen are natural "right" handers, e.g. bowl and write with their right hands (e.g. Matthew Hayden). I played a lot of tennis (left handed) before cricket, and it always seemed natural to me to bat right-handed as it is a left-handed tennis player's natural 2-handed backhand. I wonder if any batting coach experts have ideas as to whether actually batting the "wrong" (non-traditional) way around is actually more advantageous. For example, Michael Clarke is a natural left-hander who bats right-handed. So it seems to me that at elite levels the game is becoming increasingly populated with batsmen whose batting stance is actually the reverse of the traditional. Could there be a reason for this?

I started watching cricket from 1983. And from 1983 to 1988, Indian team did not have a single LHB(in toporder,middle or tail). The first LHB India had was in 1988 in the form of WV Raman. Kambli also joined in 1993(1991 in ODI). But India did not have a single LHB till Ganguly became a permanent member of the team. Since then India had a share of Middle order of Lefties.Gambhir,Yuvraj,Raina, Robin Singh, were regulars. Infact the first Indian lefty to score more than one hundred in test cricket was Vinod Kambli. since then the list has increased to accomodate Ganguly,Gambhir and Yuvraj. The more they become successful the more budding cricketers will turn lefty. As simple as that. India did not a single successful lefty so the younger generation did not produce lefties.

Michael, have you heard of Peter Roebuck's theory that cricket has had the batting style the wrong way round the whole time? He argues that a lot of the LHB we see these days actually do most other things with their right hand (and a few RHB do things with left hand). I doubt this is true for beginnners, but it may be true that those who are good enough to start with get an advantage from a stronger top hand.

In my view, the real question is not why so many lefties open the batting but rather why lefties are so over-represented in cricket (and in sports in general). My own estimate of the number of lefties in the overall population is that they cannot be more than say 15 - 20% (this is complete guesswork of course) - and yet they comprise a far higher percentage of cricket XIs in general. More like between 30 and 45% of the various teams are lefties. Which leads me to think they are more gifted athletically or have better eye-hand coordination or something else. Which of course is bizarre because lefties are supposedly more accident prone as nearly everything in this world is built with right-handers in mind as they are far and away the majority.

Interesting article. As a natural lefty , I bat right handed and bowl Left arm spin. I sometimes do rue my choice of batting. But interestingly, it came natural to me.
Also, I read somewhere that there are 7% left-handed people in the world, but it seem there are more in international cricket. ( At least 20%?)

I have given much thought to this. My theory is that for the most part there are right handed opening bowlers who mostly tend to swing the new ball away from the right hander. This is a less dangerous ball to the left hander as it will be coming into him and I think that is easier to negotiate. The bowler also has less margin for error to the leftie in terms of line. Get it slightly off and it is into his pads or too wide of offstump to be of any bother. Added to that is the difficulty of the right arm opening bowler getting the leftie out lbw. To pitch a ball in line and to get it to go on hitting the stumps is very difficult for a right armer coming in over the wicket. The ball has to do a great deal. To me the best new ball bowler currently operating is Dale Steyn and he is much more potent when bowling to right handers. What is now needed to counter the leftie openers is a number of left arm opening bowlers.

Some really erudite and informed opinions here. Thanks everyone. I think most readers agree that:
(a) it's an advantage to bat LH
(b) LH batsmen are a higher percentage than the average population (Simrat mentioned 7%)
(c) the right-arm outswing bowler is easier for a leftie to face and less chance of getting an LBW
(d) Left-arm bowlers are in short supply.
Navin's comments were really insightful. I didn't realise India had that few left-handed batsmen during that long period in the 80s and 90s. I can't recall too many Pakistani lefties either and Sri Lanka weren't full of them until the Jayasuriya era started in the mid 1990s. Perhaps there's something to the theory that being a leftie on hard bouncy pitches is an advantage. Or that being a RH batsman on slower, turning pitches is perceived to be advantageous. Or maybe, it's all complete coincidence and I've just wasted hours pondering on it. My wife thinks I doth ponder on cricket far too much!

Right handed people are the majority and left handed by far the minority. To take out a left handed person you have to think the opposite to how you would ball to a right handed person like a mirror image. Left handed cricketer's have an advantage simply because this is much harder to achieve for a right handed person and visa versa. And yes I can believe that up until a certain time in some teams there were no lefties because it was discouraged. As a left handed person myself I can write with both hands(but prefer my left hand)play all bat sports right handed, eat correctly. I think to solve the problem you need bowlers to practice being ambidextrous.

yah......i am not sure for left handers opening .........but any person sitting on a couch with a beer with him would love to watch a lefty play........and many experts have agreed that leftys look much more compact and the look much more classy....u can see brian lara,yuvraj singhmike hussey...........these r some guys who r class players...one advantage the left handers have that is they can play the ball on their leg stump very easily......i mean the hook and the pull....its like natural for them........and wen they face the RHB they have to swing the ball from the outside of legstump which is always more difficult than pirchin it straight and swinging......

It seems the percentage of left hand opening batsmen have gone up only recently. Till seventies , I can think of Arthur Morris, Bill Lawry for Australia, Puller,SubbaRow for England
For India , there was no left handed opener from Contractor to WVRaman ( Solkar did open in one Test)For Pakistan it was Sadiq in early seventies. Having both the openers left handed was almost unheard of .

Interesting discussion. The latin word for LH was sinestra (sinister). After bowling to 1 of them most people would agree that its an apt description. LH in general is a phenomenon that plagues most elite level sports. Studies vary with the actual definition (eg is a LH person one who writes with the LH & does everything else RH? Or vice versa? )& the percentage varies as well (7-18%)based on the varying definitions, but overall the numbers are amazing. EG 48% of Intl fencers are LH. David Barry has stated in Best of the Best that SL’s top order since Test status has been approx 45-50% LH (don’t have his work on me so please feel free to correct this.) These figures are entirely disproportionate with the % of RH vs LH in the general populace. Barry also argues that perhaps a “pure” LH is one who bats & bowls LH. Open for debate? The ANU did a LH vs RH study and found that LH people had quicker neural pathways (reflex tests) than a RH. (to be continued

(contd) Granted the study was not conclusive and other similar studies have come to different conclusions entirely (Google them & enjoy) but if u ever watch a leftie set up for a pull or cut then u may agree with the ANU. Even a fraction of time gained is vital at elite level sports. When I was at Uni our lecturer went to a training session for the local Pro BBall team. The coach was stunned that his shooter couldn’t hit the jump shot from the right wing. My lecturer noticed & stated that the player was RH but was LH dominant& the coach should run the play from the left wing. It worked. The cultural and religious elements shouldn’t be discarded. I grew up on a farm & my father was LH. I do many things LH: shoot a rifle, bow & arrow, play pool & I can shoot a basketball with either hand from 3 pt range. I play cricket RH. But I was converted from LH to RH for most things during my catholic education at an early age (Im 36.) The extracurricular things my dad taught me were done LH. TBC

In the western world shaking hands is done RH& a powerful person has a RH man. Lots of cultural significance placed on RH with many derived from the Christian bible. These are all historical remnants of the distrust shown to (sinister)LH people. But to return to Michaels question perhaps its a mixture of all of the above elements? Cultural changes, faster neural pathways & the booming industry of professional sports are attracting more LH (those who weren’t forced to “convert.”)While on the subject of LH IMHO the great Don played like a LH: he was strong square of the wicket, drove through the covers & had the best late cut I have ever seen. He also played around his front pad (On drive but with his front foot closed off & pointing to cover!) Obviously this didn’t hinder him in the slightest. A lot of LH even at INTL levels have difficulty opening their front foot on the straight/on drive. Perhaps more stats & figures will help us but does it appears the being LH offers an advantage

As a leftie myself i would love to explode on the start of play .Generally in lefties their right arm(my backhand) is more powerful so giving a high backlift so clearing the in field also cutting and slashing the ball is easier (much easier) than a rhb due to the same reason.... so they are able to pierce the infeild and create the all vital pressure and give a illusion of immortality a good example is jayasuriya and gambhir ...... have you noticed that lefties have become more plentiful after feilding restrictions ..... selectors have to prefer them over rhb's who are more effective down the order....

In this same period Australia has generally had a pretty decent right-handed batsman batting at 3 (which is often where the best batsman in the side bats).

So any opposing attack that takes that first wicket has to then deal with a left-right combination, which breaks up the line of their bowlers, leading to a pretty good stand for the second wicket.

NZ started this trend back in the mid-1980s when Martin Crowe used to bat at 3 behind two left-handed openers.

As to why so many LHB perform well enough at state-level that they get selected for the national team, your guess is as good as mine.