From offcut to centre stage, Rogers' innings and career has been defined by patience Rogers steers Australia to dominant position A maiden century by Chris Rogers gives Australia the edge over England on the second day of the fourth Ashes Test at Durham on Saturday. An hour after tea on Saturday, a section of the Chester-le-Street crowd began singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Is it Shane Watson scoring a Test century? No, but something just as unlikely. The first of the current Australian XI other than Michael Clarke to pass three figures in nearly a year was Chris Rogers, a fortnight shy of his 36th birthday, a player with more clubs in his resume than Adam Scott. Chris Rogers, along with former opening partner Shane Watson, resurrected Australia's innings. Thirteen Test matches ago, when David Warner scored 119 against South Africa in Adelaide, Rogers was battling along for Victoria before a mid-summer lull with the Sydney Thunder. The only movement in Australia's Test batting order was a push to get rid of the over-35s. Rogers' one-Test career was a five-year-old asterisk. If cricket has a twilight zone, surely he was in it. Or maybe Twilight Zone. Ten months later, Rogers stands as a magical symbol of reprieve: from time, from oblivion, from the laws of gravity. It's never too late! Grandfathers across the country will be dusting off their Slazengers and reapplying their Polyarmour. Becoming Australia's second-oldest man to make a maiden Test century, Rogers was adding another footnote to a career which is already a curiosity. He has now improved his highest Test score in six of his nine innings. Who knows where it will stop? That was hardly relevant to the immediate situation on Saturday afternoon, as he and Watson arrested a slide and restored Australia's position. Earlier, Stuart Broad had bowled his best spell of the series to wreck the Australian top order. Conditions in the first three Tests had not helped Broad, who, while neutered as a seamer, had still played a useful role as gadfly. Here,with early swing and seam assisted by overcast skies, Broad indicated what he might have done with more help. He bowled exceptionally well to dismiss Warner, Usman Khawaja and Clarke, and at 4/76, when Steve Smith edged Tim Bresnan, Australia were losing the advantage their bowlers had won. Throughout the collapse, Rogers had been looking for a partner. Hammerstein? Out strode Watson, in his new role of number six, which he pronounced, pre-match, to be 'enjoying' already. All tour, Australia have banked on the Rogers-Watson combination; they just weren't expecting it to happen at four wickets down. Rogers was getting the ball away with what Jason Gillespie, that Test double-centurion, called a batsman's complete repertoire: the cover drive and the tuck off the hip. In his stance, squinting through contact lenses, bat dangling loosely, Rogers seemed like the red-haired, freckled class captain with his stats books who opens the batting because he cleans the kit and refuses to be the scorer. Look now - the cricket nuffie is a first-class batsman of 20,000 runs' standing, and an Ashes century-maker. He needed two reprieves - but what is his career, if not a reprieve? In one Broad over, he survived an epic DRS referral process of which the less said the better, for brevity's sake, other than that the correct decision was reached. On 49, after repeatedly playing and missing nervously, he edged Broad low to second slip. Graeme Swann dived and floored a hard chance. After running the single, Rogers only raised his bat, sheepishly, for his 50 because people were clapping. By that stage he had Watson with him. As an opener, Watson has looked like a number six. As a number six, he played like an opener, correct against the still-swinging ball, not scoring a boundary until the 35th ball he faced. He had his 'I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me' face on, but Watson was in a determined mood, controlling his urges and playing fractionally later than usual on the slow wicket. After passing fifty, he straight-drove James Anderson so hard that the ball would have broken any bone or stump in its path. After it came back from the boundary, Anderson gave it to the umpire as if this one mighty blow must have knocked it out of shape. Anderson's next ball was clever - right at the Wat Spot, the front pad just below the knee roll. But on this day, Watson's technique and eye were up to the job and he kept out the repeated forays into his weakness. When he was out, it was to a tickle down the leg side, just another way of stopping him converting. But he had done a fine job for his team. By then, Rogers was undergoing his own agonies of conversion. A Roman Catholic dragged to Durham Cathedral by Henry VIII could scarcely have had a worse time. Rogers spent half an hour on 96 - facing nobody but Swann. He couldn't penetrate a stacked off side, and on the leg, Swann was tempting him to play his flick off the pads, a shot on which Rogers had suddenly developed the yips. Twice on 96, his head twitched and his hands spasmed as he popped balls off his thigh. His next run looked as impossible as, for so many years, had a position in the Australian team. Rogers, of anyone, should know how to wait. But he looked trapped, tactically and mentally. Mama mia, let him go! Finally, after 19 torturous deliveries, he got down on bended knee and reached his hundred in one fell sweep shot. It was a wonderful Ashes moment. More of those watching this match would be older than Rogers than younger, but he seems, to everyone, a cricketing Methuselah, and they were cheering for old age itself. He raised his bat in weary relief as much as triumph, and, to soak up the bipartisan applause, turned to all the degrees of the oval, any way the wind blew.