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Shut the Buck up and leave Chris Rogers alone

26th December, 2014
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Chris Rogers has announced his retirement from first class cricket at 39. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)
Expert
26th December, 2014
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Before this Australia-India series even began, some people were very down on Chris Rogers. Too old, too slow, too close to the end.

Before this Australia-India series began, some were very down on Rohit Sharma. Too young, too fast, never likely to make a beginning.

Two Tests have provided differing fortunes. A run of fifties has seen Rogers’ critics reluctantly withdraw, still muttering, though half-centuries only ever keep the jackals at the edge of the firelight.

Rohit, meanwhile, was dropped for the third Test in Melbourne starting on Boxing Day, leaving his detractors free to bask in the post-gorge glow of perceived vindication.

Media reporting drives a lot of this, or at least provides its genesis. Unsubtle conclusions are too often drawn from limited evidence, packaged credibly and distributed in bulk. Commentators tie off a simple contention with a plausible causative link. Punters pick up on these themes or have their existing ideas confirmed. The conclusions of the few become the truisms of the many.

This guy’s too old. That guy’s a slogger. This one can’t play the short ball. It matters not whether the claim stands up to scrutiny as long as it can bear a glance. Such conclusions are held to be self evident, which is often when conclusions are at their most misleading.

Take the idea of Rohit as a Test prospect. After home centuries in his first two Tests as the scene-stealer in Sachin Tendulkar’s farewell anticlimax against a barely conscious West Indies, Rohit’s other seven Tests have all been overseas. He had two poor games in South Africa – hardly the first Indian to suffer that fate – then made 72 and 31* beside two failures in New Zealand.

So ended that run. Later he returned for a single Test in the middle of five against England, then got games in Adelaide and Brisbane. Those last three each yielded a start (28, 43, 32) plus some handy overs and a couple of bonus wickets. On that basis, according to the many-strong voices of the digital void, his cards have been marked ‘unworthy of Tests’.

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How Rohit looked at the crease isn’t my concern. Whether he’ll make it as a Test player isn’t my argument. But insisting that he won’t make it on the none-too-damning evidence of seven scattered Tests is an exercise in self-importance over substance, the exorcism of a clamouring need to be heard.

Where the tension in Rohit’s story is over potential, Rogers’ tale is already written. The man is closing on 300 first-class matches. He has scored 71 first-class centuries, five or six times the tallies of most of his Australian teammates. He could not be any more proven.

Of course anyone must adjust to Test cricket, however experienced. But even before this series, Rogers had played 16 Tests for four centuries and four fifties. He’d made two hundreds in the 2013/14 Ashes, then another in the 2014 trip to South Africa. He went on to two county double-centuries in that off-season, including 241 not out as Middlesex pulled off a fourth-innings miracle of 472 at Lord’s.

Then came a run of 38, 43, 5 and 2 against Pakistan. Never mind that 38 and 43 are solid scores. Nor that those innings spanned 130 and 131 balls respectively, his wicket falling in the 38th and the 41st overs. Never mind that an opener’s focus is first to see off the new ball, negotiate early pitch gremlins and tire the bowlers. Never mind that Rogers was brought in as a steady hand, a foil to more attacking teammates. Never mind that Rogers did his job.

One poor Test, and we were back to talk that he was playing for his place. The only rationale behind the chatter, of course, was that Rogers is 37 years old.

A tedious mental rigidity says that no one past a certain age is really capable of playing, despite those very evidently doing so. Misbah-ul-Haq, after all, smashed the equal-fastest Test century of all time in November this year, at well past the age of 40. Rogers was an unenthusiastic spectator in the field.

“That was pretty impressive,” he said. “I remember when I went out after that I didn’t feel like I could score one.”

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Self-deprecation is not required. Rogers is playing as well as ever in his career, and having waited so long for his chance at Tests, is hungry in a way unknown to those who start young. Especially with more Ashes on the horizon, Rogers is a compulsory selection.

In cricketing terms he’s practically English. He’s played 128 county matches, more than in the Sheffield Shield. He lives in London half the year. Of those 71 first-class centuries, just over half were made in England. He’s played 28 games at Lord’s alone, site of what will be Australia’s key Ashes battle. Yet all of that can be disregarded in the space of two poor innings.

There’s no ill-feeling, at least not publicly. Said Rogers after Day 1 of this third Test, “That’s the nature of the beast. It’s a tough business, and you guys have got things to write about. You try and avoid it but you know you’re going to come under criticism, particularly at my age if you’re not scoring runs.”

Except he’s making excuses that we don’t deserve. The petty need to fill a column can snowball. Other media figures take up the topic, which gets fans talking, which ends up putting pressure onto players themselves, on the selectors who pick them and the management looking after them.

As per that popular concept in physics, the act of observing a thing is enough to change the thing itself.

I only wish we had more patience, a preparedness to take the longer view. Even if Rogers made no runs this series, his attributes are well and truly proven.

There is an incredible arrogance that people who may have watched a couple of innings over a couple of televised Tests can think that qualifies them to comment on a man’s skills or form. In a world where too much is being said, we puff ourselves up to become human megaphones. When we feel like broadcasting something, it’s worth a thorough check that we’re not just adding to the din.

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This article was originally published on Wisden India.

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