As Australia embark upon the last of their Test commitments on this ill-starred Ashes tour at the Kia Oval, they also bid farewell to their top-order bulwark, Chris Rogers, the only batsman from whom the tourists have received truly consistent returns throughout this English summer.
At this point it probably pays to try and position Rogers within the pantheon of left-handed Australian openers, as much as one can from a sample size of 24 Tests – not quite enough to compare him to the greats like Arthur Morris, a little too many to rank against flash-in-the-pans.
He certainly hasn’t been the lantern-jawed Matthew Hayden type Australia came to know in the early part of the century, thrusting his puffed-out chest at bowlers and clattering them over the fence. In a cricketing age as eager as this one to promote the wares of mediocre short-form specialists, Test-only Rogers was also never going to become famous enough to spruik air-conditioners like Mark Taylor.
But when it’s come to churning out runs and even more crucially, notching up big hundreds, the stocky and unfashionable southpaw has for a decade now been like a convenience store that never closes. The only problem is that Australia’s national selection panel only properly embraced that fact in the last three years.
Rogers is steeped in cricket. His father John committed much of his life to it after playing a handful of games for New South Wales and with wife Ros recently purchased their very own oval, the village-style Hume and Hovell ground and pavilion in Strath Creek, country Victoria. They’re old school cricket people. How else would one of their number break back into international cricket at 35 and produce runs at this rate if his efforts weren’t built on solid foundations?
Perhaps it’ll only be once he’s gone that Rogers is spoken of in the same warm tones as a “Mr Cricket” character like Michael Hussey, but that’s closer to what he’s been, a 24/7, 365-days-per-year batting machine living an endless summer between Australia and England long before Ashes cricket came calling. When these batting feats afforded him the luxury of an Audi sports car, Rogers returned home only to discover his definition of a deal-breaker: his cricket kit didn’t fit anywhere inside. Straight back to the showroom it went.
Rogers actually started out his representative career in the Western Australian Under-17s as a leg-spinner, a most demanding and fickle craft. Besides a recent tendency to offer early chances, he’s now reduced the process of batting to such a risk-free operation that runs are closer to a mundane certainty, like the arrival of bank statements or the sight of the groceries being swiped across the counter and placed in bags.
“Obviously in Australia we talk about yin and yang,” said his ever-quotable David Warner after Rogers had patiently compiled 173 at Lord’s when the Ashes was still alive. Those are a hard type of runs to replace. It has been discussed to the point of banality in recent times but Rogers and Warner’s differences as opening batsmen could not be starker. Warner bats like he’s trying to approximate the entire team’s ego in one muscular swipe, Rogers suppresses his own so well that once set at the crease, it’s as if he’s on a lake on which rocks can skim but never sink.
This series has been a slightly enhanced summary of what Rogers has offered since called back from the relative obscurity of the Sheffield Shield and County Championship treadmill; 437 runs at 62.42 to lead all Australian batsmen. This after starting the series under a considerable injury cloud due to a nasty concussion in the West Indies, a dose that was doubled up on this tour. Passing the half-century mark in half his innings, he’s put more clear-headed team-mates in the shade.
Rogers was never one for adrenalin rush of taking attacks apart. His patience for a bowling misdemeanour makes the sight of a bad ball deflected to the ropes resonate just as poignantly as the thud of a good one middled to the fence. How Australia hopes to replace such subtle and elusive qualities is anyone’s guess. The cricket in this Ashes series has been like one mad orgy, bodies and limbs spread every which way. Abstinence is a far harder sell.
But that is the task now; finding another Rogers, the batsman Australia desperately needed for half a decade but only rewarded once the slow creep of the veteran ailments like diminished eyesight and weary legs had taken their toll. What heights he might have reached five years ago.
The Ashes are now lost and this Test a dead rubber, so the reward for perseverance like this will be as understated as Rogers himself. If you see him disappearing into the sunset, it’ll be in a sensible car with a nice big boot.
