Sam Robson is a star opener we may have lost Sydney-born Middlesex opener Sam Robson celebrates a century in May. TURN away now if you can't handle any more, but it's worth noting that the highest-scoring Australian batsman in England at the moment has no intention of ever donning the baggy green. Worse still, he has his eyes on playing for the other side and could be doing so next year. Sam Robson was born in NSW, played for Australia's under-19s with Phil Hughes and Mitchell Starc, but has opted to pursue his first-class career in England. In a further blow to Australian cricket, the batsman left home because he gets more first-class games playing for the English counties than he would in the Sheffield Shield. This year, Robson, 24, has scored 986 runs at an average of 70 batting for Middlesex in the first division. His top score is 215 not out and he hit 166 last week in an innings that had the purists celebrating. The hard-working opening batsman has two passports as his mother is English, and it is the latter he chooses to utilise in cricket. He comes home every summer and plays with the Eastern Suburbs club in Sydney where he top-scored last season, but cannot play Shield because he would have to renounce his English citizenship to do so under the game's complicated dual-nationality rules. Robson's family say the nationality issue is a "sensitive" subject and the batsman has never completely ruled out returning to Australia, but he appeared reasonably adamant he wanted to continue striving for an English cap in a recent interview. I've been here since I finished school. I love living in London, I love playing for Middlesex and I have just signed a new contract so this is where it is at for me at the moment," Robson said. To play international cricket you have to knock the door down for year after year after year, and I have had a couple of good weeks and I am happy with the way things are going this season. Robson will qualify for England next year. One of the few better performed batsmen than him in English first-class cricket is Joe Root, who cemented his place with 180 in the second Test. Robson is primarily a long-form player and gets 16 county matches a summer for Middlesex. He would get only 10 if he played for NSW and would have to play Big Bash during January and February as the first-class season is suspended for that tournament. Robson has scored more than 3500 first-class runs, including eight centuries, since making his debut for Middlesex in 2009. His most recent knock received rave reviews. "True, Ed Joyce batted beautifully on Wednesday in making an elegant hundred for Sussex," wrote Cricinfo's David Lloyd. Even that innings was put in the shade, though, as Robson blunted the dangerous home attack for hour after hour while scoring his third century of a wonderfully profitable season. A good number of deliveries, rearing past the outside edge, were simply unplayable. But Robson chased nothing, shrugged off those balls that beat him and, with his splendidly tight technique evident throughout, accumulated runs so assuredly that Sussex were left close to despair. The 24-year-old opener - born in Sydney but only 12 months away from qualifying for England on residency grounds - came into this contest with 802 Championship runs to his name. By the time he trudged away in the evening, finally dismissed for 166 after 6 1/2 hours at the crease, that total had soared to within touching distance of four figures, leaving him alone at the head of the run-scoring charts.