Chris Rogers is open for business as the Aussies try to forget chaos

 
Stephen Brenkley8 July 2013

One of Australia’s opening batsmen for the start of the Ashes will be Chris Rogers. That is a statement whose time it seemed would never come.

Rogers’ Test career had begun and ended with a solitary appearance against India in 2008 when he made four and 15. He is now 35 and the Ashes are supposed to be for other people.

The rest of his career would be spent carving out limitless runs for Middlesex, where he had assumed the captaincy, and for Victoria.

Then his country fell into a crisis, caused by losing both senior players and matches. Rogers suddenly became the batsman of wisdom and experience they needed above all.

Darren Lehmann, Australia’s new coach, has already made it clear that Rogers and Shane Watson will open in the First Test which starts at Trent Bridge on Wednesday.

Rogers appears to have taken in his stride the astonishing recall and the recent tumult, which saw Lehmann replace Mickey Arthur as coach 17 days before the series began.

“I’ve played one Test and had three coaches,” he said wryly.

It is almost a contradiction that someone with so scant an international record should now be considered almost invaluable for his experience, especially of English pitches.

“It has been a long time,” said Rogers, who had a typically blistering start to this season for Middlesex. “I probably thought I wasn’t going to get another chance. I guess I can look at this as something where I don’t have much to lose. I didn’t see it coming but I’m grateful to be in this position.

“I think my runs helped to change the [selectors’] minds first and foremost but also maybe with the retirements of Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey they needed a little bit of experience and an older head with such a tough series coming up.”

He was at the Finchley Academy for routine fitness tests when the call came through from the chairman of selectors, John Inverarity. He missed it but some of his county colleagues saw who it was from. “I was told to keep it quiet but it was pretty hard to keep a straight face,” he said.

Rogers has scored a mountain of first-class runs in the past 15 years — his 9,101 in the Sheffield Shield is more than any other batsman since he first appeared in 1998. He has also amassed 10,039 in the County Championship for Derbyshire, Leicestershire and from 2011 Middlesex, all for an average in the early 50s. He is compact, well ordered and powerful and for any other country he would have been a fixture at the top of the order.

But Australia were Australia then, the best in the world by a distance with opening batsmen to waste.

“It was frustrating,” said Rogers. “I felt I was ready but even in my late twenties Australia had all the legends, I guess, and then after that there was a push for youth.

“It just felt like there was always one of the younger guys who was scoring runs and one of the selectors wanted to have him. It seemed there was always one person in front of me — so it was disappointing.”

It is not quite true to say that any feather would have done to knock him down when the long-delayed news came through that he was in the squad for this Ashes tour. Circumstances had at last conspired in his favour.

“I had started to get some hope again,” he said. “There had been times when I had given up but I guess after the Indian series my name was starting to get mentioned in the media back home. Before I came here this summer I even gave the baggy green to my parents just in case to be sent over.”

Note that he was not confident to bring it himself. Rogers added: “It has been interesting but it’s been offset by the fact that Lehmann is such a calm character who has set us at ease.

“If I am to play in the First Test it’s going to be a little bit of an unknown for me and I have to deal with that. But I still see my role as passing on information to the young guys and I think I’ve had some input already.”

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