Pressure still on Rogers

Such is the level of scrutiny afforded an Ashes summer, even with the series comprehensively won and the urn returned, Australia opener Chris Rogers enters his first Boxing Day Test anxious and under pressure.

While his team has already achieved its summer objective by reclaiming the trophy surrendered to England in 2009, Rogers acknowledges his personal contribution has been less than compelling.

A total of 156 runs from six innings with only two scores in excess of 50 has yielded him a series average of just 26.

Only fast bowler Peter Siddle (11.33) can point to a lower batting average in Australia’s Ashes campaign to date.

And while Rogers’ numbers might appear positively rosy by the England team’s standards – none of their specialist batsmen have reached a series aggregate of 200 beyond its halfway point – he knows that, at age 36, his tenure at Test level can’t sustain too many flat spots.

“Every game, I think that’s part and parcel of playing for Australia,” Rogers said when asked if he felt that he was under pressure to maintain his place even with Australia leading the series three-nil.

“I’m one of the batsmen who hasn’t got a hundred, so (I’m) under a little bit of pressure and probably haven’t got the runs I had hoped for this series.

“I haven’t been batting particularly well.

“There were a few things technically that haven’t been great, but I did a bit of work with (former Australia opener and batting coach) Justin Langer before the last Test and that was probably as good as I’ve felt.

“Hopefully that’s a good sign, but it all comes down to how many runs you get.”

Indeed, it was the fact that Rogers was hitting the ball better at the start of the third Commonwealth Bank Ashes Test in Perth than at any previous time in the series that perversely cost him his wicket.

Having left his normally explosive batting partner David Warner in the starting blocks as he charged to 11 off just nine balls faced, Rogers nudged a ball from Stuart Broad to mid-on and instinctively called for a run.

But it flew from his bat at such speed that it enabled James Anderson to gather, swivel and throw down the stumps with a diving Rogers short of his ground and with another inadequate score posted alongside his name.

The manner of that dismissal, in the second over of the match, is another reason why Rogers feels anxious when pondering the prospect of facing up to the opening ball of the fourth Test in front of a sell-out Boxing Day crowd at his adopted home ground.

“I like to think I’m a fairly smart guy but that was very dumb,” he said today. “I think sometimes that instinct takes over and I hit it harder than I thought I did, and you don’t expect one of the best fielders in the world to be hanging out at mid-on.

“That was a bit unfortunate so I’ll try not to do that again.

“(But) to play in front of a Boxing Day crowd, it doesn’t get any better. It may be a world record crowd, so to go out and open the batting against that I think it’s going to be great fun – daunting, but amazing as well.

“I definitely don’t want to get out first ball, but to have the honour of facing the first ball in a Boxing Day Test would be fantastic.”

Rogers is something of a curiosity in modern cricket terms.

A studious, considered character, he understands that his game is best suited to the longer, red-ball formats even though he is a veteran of the English county scene and has turned out in earlier incarnations of the 20-over Big Bash League in Australia.

But once the current Ashes series is completed, Rogers won’t be joining his team-mates in the limited-overs international arena, and nor will he be involved in the domestic 20-over competition, which he claims he has “no interest” in playing.

And the Bupa Sheffield Shield competition remains in abeyance until mid-February.

His options, should he look to capture or maintain form prior to the Australian squad heading to South Africa for a three-Test series beginning in early February, would be to play grade cricket in suburban Melbourne.

Given that Rogers has been involved with the Test set-up since being drafted back into the fold for this year’s earlier Ashes series in England and watched his rival opener-in-waiting Phil Hughes pile on runs in the Sheffield Shield (including three centuries), his preferred outcome is to take a break.

But he concedes a pending vacation is not yet in the forefront of his thoughts, or those of his team-mates, even though the fate of the Ashes has been decided after barely 14 days of Test cricket this summer.

“It wasn’t that long ago that we lost that second Test at Lord’s (last July), and the pain we felt after that was probably one of the worst moments in my career and probably for a lot of the other guys as well,” Rogers said.

“That’s still pretty fresh in our minds, so there will be no let-up. There’s a lot of passion in this side and I’m pretty sure we’ll want to keep beating the English.

“Three-nil in England, we didn’t think that was a fair result.

“But if we ended up being four-three or five-three up (after 10 consecutive Ashes Tests), we would end up being happy with that.

“So there’s a lot for us to play for.”