Bucking the Trend

by Chris Rogers

  About the only shot I could see regularly scoring with against Swann was driving him down the ground or through cover, but as I said I didn’t have the strength or inclination to get down the pitch. I would watch David Warner play those shots numerous times against those same balls, and I know Huss was able to also. But for me it was a case of sitting back and admiring them while not letting myself think I could do the same. That left me simply trying to survive, waiting for the bad ball as Lance had counselled. Swann ensured I would be waiting a long time, and as each match went on he knew that he could just bowl at me without fear of being hit over his head.

  This isn’t to say I avoided trying to find ways of scoring. In between the dual Ashes series I did some work with Dean Jones about getting down the pitch more often. But to have the courage to do that in a Test match is really hard, especially when your role in the side is to be the ‘bat all day’ opener. I have a vivid memory of watching the first Test in India in 2013 on TV, and seeing Ed Cowan run down the pitch to hit Ravi Ashwin for six. Trying it again soon after, he got nowhere near a higher, shorter ball from Ashwin and was stumped by miles. At the time I thought ‘that’s not your game’, and had a similar feeling when it was me out there. Other guys in the order could go after Swann with success, so long as I sold my wicket dearly and wore the bowlers down.

  One reason I was hesitant to get down the wicket was a sense that I wasn’t always the greatest reader of a spinner’s length. There were balls that I thought were short and ripe for the cut, but turned out to be flatter arm balls that skidded on in the direction of the stumps. As a younger player I was out a few times trying to pull a spinner and being hit on the back pad in front of the stumps. After that occurs a few times you lose your courage to take the risk. Shane Watson was someone who I’d see pull the spinners off the stumps and I’d admire the audacity of the shot. Ultimately I think my relative timidity against spin was drawn from an upbringing at the WACA Ground. You’d almost never see much in the way of rough, you could play against the spin with impunity, and so your tools to tackle a turning ball were affected. It wasn’t until I went to Northampton and its spinning surface that I started to think more deeply about how to play spin, helped along by the wise guidance of Lance.

  In my own way I worked out how to stop playing against the spin, trying to hit off-spinners towards cover, and working left-arm spinners through the leg side with my pads behind me as a second line of defence. I developed my own game, but never with the conviction or range to be able to take on the very best spin bowlers. That was to be exposed by Swann and also by Yasir Shah and Zulfiqar Babar in the UAE against Pakistan. Where Lance and I decided to wait for the bad ball, we were fine at first-class level for the most part, but the best spin bowlers in Tests don’t give you that leeway.

  Funnily enough, it was actually Shane Warne who encouraged me to keep going down that path. Shane was bowling for Victoria when I made my 279 for WA in 2006 on a flat deck in Perth. After the innings he offered a kind word about it in the lunch room, and in reply I asked him about talking a bit more after the game. In the rooms a couple of days later, he called me over to chat, and very generously answered my questions.

  ‘Do you think I handled you ok?’

  ‘Good mate. If that’s your game, just be patient and don’t get out.’

  Simple stuff maybe, but with that I had confirmation that I’d found the right game for me, even though it wasn’t the usual Australian method for handling spin.

  The other thing I took from Lance was how he set up. His front foot pointed towards the bowler, something I also noticed about Sachin Tendulkar whenever he drove the ball. Because I’m bow-legged and almost pigeon-toed, I could find it difficult to turn my hips and get my foot down the wicket. Often I would shape to drive and my front foot would be headed towards point, which makes it difficult to bend your knee down the line of the ball and create the right shape for the shot.

  It took a while for Lance’s style to feel right, but once it did I enjoyed the most fruitful period of my life, in which I averaged over 80 for almost a year. When Lance and I spoke about it, he asked me where I wanted my feet to be when I hit the ball. When I said down the wicket, he said ‘why don’t you just start with your feet in that position?’ That also made a lot of sense, because it was working backwards from my finishing position to where I would be when the bowler delivered. It also served to simplify my movement – why worry about how to get into that position when I could already be there, waiting, and giving myself so much more time to actually play the shot?

  This conversation grew in part out of the work I’d already done with Paul Nixon before my double hundred against the Australians in 2005, getting my weight and head moving towards mid-on or at least straight down the pitch, rather than across the crease. Opening up my front foot in order to be able to get my weight moving straight through my front knee was a natural extension of that, and the two ideas have been at the forefront of my way of dealing with new-ball bowlers ever since. I know it’s far from the most aesthetically pleasing technique, but it worked for me, and got me making a nice straight line back down the wicket to meet the bowler. Most of that came from Lance and Paul.

  Another element of my game was learning to play the ball late, something derived in large part from watching Justin Langer at close quarters. If a fast bowler got too straight, he’d let the ball travel all the way under his eyes before rolling it down to fine leg. When they angled it across him, he would seldom fail to get the ball down to third man along the ground, meaning a cheap boundary or at the very least an easy single. Countless bowlers, captains and slip fielders would get frustrated by this and rant about how lucky he was, but it was all very deliberate, and something I picked up on.

  Once again, this worked nicely in concert with another idea, this time from Dad. We talked a lot about swing patterns, and his belief that you should always finish a shot with your hands high, almost as though you’ve rolled the ball down the face of the bat. I’ve seen so many batsmen who virtually jab at the ball rather than stroking it, which only serves to give the ball momentum. What that tends to mean is that if the ball moves and catches the edge, it’s going to fly at catchable height, as it did too often during the 2015 Ashes series.

  By contrast, if your hands are finishing high, it should follow logically that the ball will be going down – far less likely to offer a catch. Interestingly given our earlier conversation, high hands at the finish was something I noticed about David Boon when he was such a reliable top order batsman for Australia. Add to that some softer hands and an angled bat, a sort of a delayed use of your wrists, and the chance of an airy edge is greatly reduced. This was what I spoke about quite extensively with Shaun Marsh after the Trent Bridge Test of that 2015 Ashes series, and something he used to good effect to help Australia win the first day/night Test against New Zealand later that same year.

  The best way I found to develop those soft, high hands was lots of throw-downs with tennis balls, where I taught myself to play with a slower motion through the ball and make softer contact. Otherwise the balls would fly in the air and not into the ground. Part of this stemmed from knowing that I didn’t have the power to muscle my way out of tough situations, or ‘put the pressure back on the bowler’ as it is often referred to. Instead I needed to find ways to get through those spells via defence and thinking. Now every batsman is going to hear the phrase ‘use soft hands’ a heap of times as they’re growing up, but it’s not as easy as saying it. The adrenaline pumping through you in the middle is such that you see so many guys trying to hit the cover off the ball, when what you should be doing is starting softly and moving up through the gears.

  At Victoria, Greg Shipperd would talk a lot about the three paces of batting. Your first 15 to 20 runs should be about getting in tight with your defence, being solid and taking few risks. Next you should be trying to work the ball around more, finding gaps in the field and working the strike over. Get through that phase and th
en you can expand your game and hit the boundaries. That message resonated with me because it spoke to finding a mentality where you focused first on defence, then accumulation, and then attack. As an opener in particular you need a defence you can rely on, and it is often dangerous to be thinking about going after the bowlers early.

  Over the course of the Test matches I played, a few duels stick in the mind. For England, James Anderson and Stuart Broad posed very tough and different questions, before Swann followed them up with off spin of the highest class. Against South Africa, Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel also offered sharp contrasts, high skills and a considerable intimidation factor. I’ll break down what I was trying to do against each bowler, and how I adjusted my methods depending upon what they were offering up.

  Anderson’s skill levels were outstanding, and as a classical new-ball swing and seam bowler he was in many ways the ideal test of an opening batsman. As mentioned before, a lot of my technical base was built up around how to combat the early movement of the ball, and making sure I didn’t get tangled into a position where I was playing around a planted front foot and susceptible to lbw. Against Anderson, I actually found that his technical perfection worked in my favour. Because he got the seam in great position almost every time, I had a relatively good idea of which way it was going to swing. Other clues included whether his action was getting a little more side-on (inswing to the left-hander) or front-on (away swing). A lot has been made of his ‘wobble ball’ with a splayed seam, but he only very occasionally used that against me.

  That being said, a swinging ball is still an enormous challenge, and if your technique isn’t shaped the right way to cope it will only be a matter of time before Anderson gets you, particularly as he can move it both ways. This was another area where I was able to find a bit of an edge, because my positioning was neutral enough to be able to cope with both. A lot of batsmen with more attractive techniques than me will be nicely set-up to handle inswing, or outswing, but not many are able to handle both. A bit like when dealing with reverse swing, it’s vital that you shorten your stride moving forward and be prepared for the ball to go either way.

  If you show Anderson a desire to commit early, he will be all over you, using whatever combination he thinks best to set you up for the wicket ball. Most often he would drag guys across the crease with away swing before an inswinger or cutter would seek the stumps. To tackle that, I would hang back, watch the ball extremely closely and just try to play it as late as I could. I’ll be the first to admit that this doesn’t look pretty, but it worked for me. After Anderson got me twice in the Trent Bridge Test in 2013, he only dismissed me once more in the remaining 12 matches we played against each other.

  In contrast, I found Broad to be more difficult as our Ashes battles went on. Where Anderson was highly consistent, Broad could have days and spells where it just wasn’t working for him. Lacking rhythm, he would either float the ball up to the bat or drop short and I would feel I could get him. But on other days he would just be so good, finding the most awkward length and line that made the most of his height and pace. In addition to this, he worked out in the 2015 series that he was most dangerous to me when going around the wicket and moving the ball away from me through the air. That was extremely challenging, and required me to find another technical way to counter him. Essentially I found myself going back and playing as late as I could, and if the ball moved away I would simply hope to miss it while covering my pads and stumps.

  That realisation hit me after the first over of the Trent Bridge Test, when I walked out thinking my best method was to get forward as much as possible and try to cover the movement. But with the help of some tennis ball bounce from a fresh pitch, Broad got enough movement to find the edge. At the time, as I have said, I genuinely thought I had it covered, played it perfectly and was surprised to hear the snick and be caught behind. Replays made it look as though I was pushing out in front of myself, but this was a product of my desire to try to get to the ball before it moved too far – a bit like trying to get to a spinner before the ball turns too far. So for the final Test at The Oval I elected to go back, and played him more effectively. The series was gone by then of course.

  Overall, Broad at his best was as difficult as any bowler I faced. The other thing he could do quite often was seam the ball in the opposite direction to the way it was swinging. Get that right and it is next to impossible to deal with, no matter what technical preparation you’ve made.

  At times I felt similarly helpless facing up to Morne Morkel in South Africa. Because he is so tall his trajectory was unlike just about anyone else I faced. A lot of bowlers around the world are tall, but because they have a long bowling stride the ball isn’t actually leaving their hand at too great a height. Morkel on the other hand delivered at close to his full height. In the 2014 Centurion Test, he struck me on the shoulder from a delivery that I tried to duck. Still smarting from the blow, I tried to stand up and ride the bounce of a similar delivery next ball, and gloved it to backward short-leg. That worried me, because I felt as though neither option worked.

  However after that initial experience, I figured out that every dangerous ball from him was going to be somewhere between my stomach and my head. My response was to stand as tall as I could at the crease with my hands up high, almost as though I was setting up like a baseball hitter. I didn’t want my hands coming up to meet the ball, reasoning that this could only increase the risk of a glove popping up to short-leg or slips. Instead I wanted my hands up as high as I could, so I could be coming down on the ball. That worked better for me, as I made runs in the second and third Tests, albeit on pitches that didn’t offer quite the same level of bounce.

  During that series I felt Dale Steyn was a little way short of his peak, certainly at Centurion. He bowled some brilliant spells of reverse swing in Port Elizabeth, but his pace was not as slippery as I’d perhaps expected. Additionally he has always tended to bowl quite full, and with my technique based on tackling a swinging ball I was more comfortable dealing with that. Nevertheless, he still had the ability of a great bowler, specifically the knack of producing a brilliant, wicket-taking ball out of nowhere. You might be cruising along, thinking yourself to be in control, and all of a sudden he’d conjure a ball slightly faster or moving more than the rest, and even if it didn’t dismiss you, the dynamics would change.

  One of the underlying points I think all this demonstrates is that there is no one technique that works, no single approach superior to all the rest. I disagree, for instance, with the recent view that all batsmen should be tapping the bat before delivery. Batting is about figuring out a way that works best for you, whether it is standing up like Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, AB de Villiers or Mike Hussey, or tapping the bat like Mark Waugh. It is a matter of personal preference, and then you work out all the other components of your game from there.

  That applies as much to the decisions you make as to the way you equip yourself. A batsman is often described as making a technical or shot selection error, but to me they are one and the same. When I hear someone has a good technique because they can hit a pretty cover drive, I maintain that any player who tries that pretty cover drive against a good length ball that’s nipping away is more than likely to nick it. To me, the best players are where they are because they’ll choose to leave those balls, and use their cover drive, whether it be pretty or ugly, when it’s there’s to hit. That’s as much technique as the shape of the shot itself.

  A lot of the guys I competed with as a younger player looked great when they were going well. They’d make a hundred and coaches, selectors and media would fawn over them, saying how great they could be. But that same player would then get out cheaply in innings that followed and find himself under pressure. To get out of that they’d conjure another hundred, and the same judges would exclaim ‘oh he’s worked it out now, watch him go’, only for the pattern to repeat. To me a key to averaging 50 isn’t making lots of hundreds, but fighting it out on the days when
you’re not in good rhythm. It might mean the difference between making five and 25, and helping your team. A lot of coaches and observers will criticise the batsman who makes a start and gets out. But if that player has actually fought it out for a couple of hours despite his own lack of touch, he’s in turn made life easier for the next man.

  Let me say, never would I try to model a player’s technique completely on mine. For one thing, I’ve seen a couple of youngsters who look like they’ve done this, and I’ve never seen anything uglier. However I do believe that a lot of the individual parts of my game can work for others, as they’ve been picked up along the way through the lessons of experience. Find out what your strengths and scoring areas are, and then build a technique around that.

  CHAPTER 17

  TEAMMATES AND COACHES

  SAM ROBSON IS 11 years younger than Chris, which qualifies as a generation gap in a cricket dressing room, yet they have a relationship that runs deep, starting with their fathers, who played together in similar circumstances. When John Rogers moved to the University of New South Wales grade club he was already a player of some note and experience, having played for NSW in addition to many years with St George. It was there he met Jim Robson, 13 years his junior and eager to learn. The pair struck up a friendship based upon the older man’s tutelage, and remain close to this day.

  Sam was similarly youthful when Chris arrived at Middlesex in 2011, having worked his way into the first team after making the move from Sydney in 2008. He had played Under 19s for Australia and has now played seven Tests for England. Thanks to their fathers’ friendship, Sam already knew John Rogers, and that connection helped as the pair found themselves cast as opening partners for Middlesex, and neighbours in West Hampstead. Just as Robson was looking for a mentor, so was Chris seeking friends in a new city. As Sam tells it: