The Perils of Opening the Batting

In an email responding to my post on cricket commentary, BV Harish Kumar writes:

I have long held the belief that we haven’t had good opening pairs because the batsmen could never tolerate the partner during the between-the-overs chat. List of openers in the 80’s/90’s: Sidhu, Srikkanth, Arun Lal. I rest my case.