Bancroft eager to grab chance as Australia go young
They don’t make them like Chris Rogers any more, batsmen who can dig in, bat ugly, occupy the crease for hours upon hours, days upon days. So went the prevailing wisdom when Rogers retired last month. But was it right? Cameron Bancroft’s record suggests that he boasts more than a little bit of the Rogers mentality. Sixty-nine fewer first-class hundreds, yes, but a hint of the dogged Rogers patience.At 22, Bancroft could become Australia’s newest Test opener after being named in the squad to tour Bangladesh next month. He is certainly more Rogers than David Warner, with only one Twenty20 match to his name. Four times over the past year, Bancroft has played first-class innings of around the six-hour mark, including a 150 against India A in Chennai in July.If your weakness is losing focus as you approach six hours at the crease, that’s no bad thing. But he can go longer – much longer – as he displayed in an epic 13-hour innings of 211 against New South Wales at the WACA, an immense feat of concentration that helped secure Western Australia a place in the Sheffield Shield final.”I think it was really, really big,” Bancroft said of that innings after being picked in the Test squad on Monday. “We had to win that game to make it into a Shield final. So I think the belief I’ve got in myself that I was able to concentrate and stay sharp for as long as I did in that innings was probably the biggest belief I got out of that.”I think it’s important that if I do get an opportunity that you absolutely take it and believe that you have what it takes and do everything in your power and in your own game to be successful. That’s all you can do.”National selector Rod Marsh said Bancroft’s 150 against an India A attack featuring Test bowlers Varun Aaron and Pragyan Ojha was a key reason he was chosen for a Test series in Asia. Asked whether Bancroft’s youth had also played a part when he was weighed against older candidates such as the in-form Michael Klinger, Marsh said it could not be ignored.”He was preferred because we are looking for a young player,” Marsh said. “He had a very good season last year. He got a very good 150 against a strong India A attack, which contained two or three very good spinners. That in itself probably got him chosen ahead of some more senior players, shall we say.”In Bangladesh, Bancroft will be vying for Test selection with Joe Burns, who played two Tests against India last summer, and Usman Khawaja, who last played Test cricket on the 2013 Ashes tour of England. Marsh said the departure of Rogers and Michael Clarke meant that it was time for some of the younger batsmen in Australia to grab their opportunities.”We’ve got to develop a young batsman or two,” Marsh said. “Now it’s time these young blokes grab hold of their opportunity, take it up and do well. That’s what we’re after. Rogers has retired, we have to find someone else at the top of the order. Whether [Steven] Smith will bat at 3 or 4 going forward, that’s his decision, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he bats at No.4. So there could be two spots we have to fill at the top.”Should Bancroft win a chance in Bangladesh, it will come largely as the result of a breakthrough 2014-15 in which he was the third leading run scorer in the Sheffield Shield with 896 runs at 47.15. It was quite a turnaround from the 2013-14 summer in which he struggled and managed only 450 runs at 22.50 without a century, despite playing all 11 Shield games of the year.”I’m actually kind of glad and kind of blessed that I was able to go through something like that,” Bancroft said. “I probably felt that I was depressed at that stage. It’s certainly not nice to go through things like that, but that’s cricket, that’s the ups and downs and things you deal with in elite sport.”So to go through that and work out for myself what I needed to work on to get better and work with mentors and coaches and things like that, is something I am really glad I went through. It can only make you a better player.”