FORMER Derbyshire County Cricket Club captain Chris Rogers has been named as one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year.
The Australian left-hander has been named alongside Yorkshire and England batsman Joe Root, England women's captain Charlotte Edwards, Australia bowler Ryan Harris and destructive India opener Shikhar Dhawan.
The recognition adds to a glorious Indian summer to Rogers' career. After excellent spells in English county cricket with Derbyshire, Northants and Middlesex and in Australia with Western Australia and Victoria, he thought his chance to prove himself at the international level had gone.
Rogers played only one Test in 2008, against India, but was called up for last summer's Ashes campaign in England at the age of 35 and, in a losing series, scored 367 runs at a 40.77 average, including a maiden Test hundred at Chester-le-Street.
That was enough to keep his his place last winter and, as Australia took the Ashes back in a 5-0 whitewash, Rogers made 463 runs at 46.30 with two hundreds.
Root's award comes little more than 16 months after his international debut and follows not only an outstanding Ashes summer for him and England but a winter in which neither player nor team excelled in the slightest.
The established prime criterion for nominations is impact on the preceding English summer rather than any subsequent events.
For Edwards, only the second woman to win the prestigious award after her compatriot Claire Taylor five years ago, back-to-back Ashes victories home and away in the space of six months have provided a compelling case on all counts.
