Lara
Richards
Gavaskar
Kallis
Chappell
In the past (end of 2000s), I would have gone with this. Although probably could have had Gavaskar = Richards .
Now, in the context of the intervening years' of cricket, I think I'd have to adjust it. Back in those times, we were in the great Tendulkara/Lara debates. The great middle order bats of the time were them/Ponting/Kallis/Sanga . The premier run scoring attacking openers of that time Hayden/Sehwag, were constantly ragged on by CW in comparison to these middle order players, as one dimensional FTBs ( wrongly IMO ).
Since then we've got to see the flourishing of the Fab 4 middle order bats, but those standards for opening performance that the 2000s eras openers supposedly couldn't meet seems laugahable now, as there's not much since that even compares, like for real Warner? Alistair Cook? These guys are obviously inferior bats, or have significant holes in their record compared to the best middle order comparisons.
And for all our poking fun at Hayden/Sehwag flat track run inflation, their era adjusted run scoring is still dwarfed by Gavaskar's in a way that middle order bats simply don't have a comparison to ( maybe Smith compared to other modern middle order bats, depending on how the remainder of his career pans out ).
So I'm left in a world in which Gavaskar is so far ahead of all other modern openers, it's not even funny. And so, wouldn't he by definition be at the top of the heap, even including the modern ATG middle order bats?
It feels wrong, according to our "conventional CW wisdom", so I'm looking for counterarguments. Did Gavaskar make hay in the earlier part of the 70s, before international pace attack quality ( including the WI pace quartet, implemented in 75 ) truly became established? It seems a quite flimsy argument, if I were to confront it, as just at a cursory glance Gavaskar's big run scoring continued throughout his Test career, but maybe someone else could flesh it out.
Has opening become that less important of a role, and the consensus is to send sacrificial lambs in with low expectations? I doubt that one as well, because it's still primarily a specialist batsman only position, in Test cricket. If it wasn't very important, you'd see more all-rounders, or even wicketkeeper batsmen slotting in there more often.
So yeah, tl;dr:
Opening is hard, and unless someone has a decent argument otherwise, my rating of these would now go:
Gavaskar
Lara
Richards
Kallis
Chappell
Edit:
Lara is my batting idol too. Someone walk me back from this, because it feels so wrong to do this, regardless of the so called evidence and logic.