Chris Rogers’ position in the Australian cricket team has been questioned pretty much since his recall for the Ashes in July 2013.
He is gritty rather than pretty, and certainly doesn’t entertain compared to the likes of his batting partner David Warner. However, the correlation in the improvement in Warner’s game since Rogers’ arrival must be more than coincidence.
Nine centuries have flowed in 17 Tests since Warner began opening with Rogers, compared with the three centuries he had from the 20 Tests prior.
Some may put this down simply to the form of Warner improving with maturity, but what has allowed him to find such good form? Rogers is Warner’s perfect foil. Even in the first innings in Adelaide when he only scored nine, he had a partnership of 50 and protected the lower order.
In other countries this is the priority of the opener. In England, and more recently India, an opener’s primary role is to face as many balls as possible to protect the middle-order batsmen from the new ball. Runs aren’t so much the issue as the balls faced. If you’ve done your job the middle order will profit and runs will flow.
When India had a middle order full of great batsmen a decade ago, there was always talk about fitting the ‘best’ batsmen in by moving the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly or even Sachin Tendulkar up the order to open the innings. But they played their best when an unfashionable opener like Gautam Gambhir protected the lower order.
Australia has never looked at things that way, instead having exciting openers of the ilk of Matthew Hayden and David Warner who will take on the bowlers and set the trend for the innings. The downside of this is a first-day seaming wicket with good new-ball bowling can leave you at two for not much in no time.
That is why the best opening partnerships we have had, like Hayden and Langer, have had the ying and yang of things covered. While one attacks the other preserves his wicket, giving the former the confidence to play his natural game.
An interesting comment on this came recently from Darren Lehman, who said that one of Chris Rogers’ strongest assets had been his ability to consistently make long partnerships.
Maybe keeping Rogers in the mix for the Ashes next year isn’t such a gamble.
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