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Search forRogers in prime form and Sadler also adds a little cheer
Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 07:30
Together, they provided the highlight of the first day's play in Derbyshire's three-day match against Bangladesh A at the County Ground yesterday.
Rogers picked up where he left off in the last Championship match with a second successive first-class hundred for the county and proof of the Australian's words, suggesting he began hitting the ball better than he had for two years during his knock at Wantage Road, was there for all to see.
The need for a score was more acute for Sadler. He has endured a difficult start to life at the County Ground and has spent the last month out of the first team because of that but the left-hander added a useful 50.
It was his first half-century for Derbyshire and, as such, has to be regarded as handy but Sadler will need no telling that he should have taken the opportunity to put a more eye-catching score on the board.
Rogers was leading the side again because club captain Rikki Clarke is not playing in this game.
It had been expected that he would but he has a sore Achilles tendon and would not have been able to bowl much against the Bangladeshis, so head of cricket John Morris has decided to play Clarke as a batsman in the second team fixture against the MCC Universities at Belper, starting today, instead.
Rogers moved down the order to five to allow Dan Birch and Paul Borrington to open and the pair put on 80 before Birch was caught down the leg side by wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim for 40.
Borrington went on to score 25 and Greg Smith 19 to make it 120-3 but that brought Rogers and Sadler together for a stand of 123 in 29 overs.
For a time, they were moving their scores along equally sweetly but as Rogers began to play the most fluently, Sadler became less convincing in the 40s, as if weighed down by the realisation that he was still looking for that first 50.
When the half-century arrived, off 93 balls with five fours and a six, Sadler was out later in the same over, as he swept left-arm spinner Mosharraf Hossain on to his pad for a catch that looped up for Mushfiqur.
That was a pity because it would have done Sadler a world of good to press on.
Rogers, however, did press on and brought up his hundred off 142 balls with 10 fours and two sixes only to sky a pull and be caught behind next ball.
Nevertheless, he did look very good again.
Derbyshire declared when they lost their sixth wicket, deciding they were as close as makes no difference to their intended get-out total of 300.
That left 15 overs to examine a Bangladesh side which had batted well in the one innings possible at Leicester last week and which contained four players with Test experience.
One of them, Tamim Iqbal, was out for only four and Nazimuddin, who also got 70-plus at Leicester, quickly followed to make the score 12-2.
Kevin Dean claimed both wickets and both were caught by Tom Poynton, the 18-year-old wicketkeeper who is making his third first-class appearance for the club, but Bangladesh steadied to reach 46-2 at the close.
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KEEPING FOCUS: Derbyshire batsman Paul Borrington waits for a delivery against Bangladesh A yesterday.
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