Chris Rogers didn’t realise Ollie Peake’s potential for a long career in Australian colours by watching him bat.
Yes, he had watched plenty of footage and heard the glowing reports from up and down the national talent pathway about the Geelong teenager whose father, Clinton, had captained the national under-19 team before representing Victoria.
But Rogers kept a healthy level of scepticism about his young charge until a walk around Albert Lake in the winter of 2025. Talking cricket one-on-one with Peake, Rogers felt like he was discussing the game with a far more seasoned figure. Back in the state team’s bunker at Junction Oval, he immediately raved to the coaching staff.
“I remember coming back and saying ‘I’ve not heard a player talk like that for a while’,” Rogers told this masthead after re-signing as Victoria coach for another two seasons. “Whether he was 18 or 25, it was impressive to hear his self-awareness, his understanding of his own game, his strengths and weaknesses, and what he was working on.
“It had a lot more depth to it than most of the players who come out of the pathway and who probably have only ever tasted success because they’ve been the best players and the challenges haven’t been as hard. It was definitely eye-opening.
“I hadn’t had a lot to do with Ollie up until then. But that conversation opened my eyes to just where he’s at and maybe what he’s capable of.”
Peake credits his father for instilling a strong sense of team to his batting.
“Probably from Dad, to be honest,” Peake said. “He’s strong on if you’re making runs in a losing team, they don’t mean too much versus if you make runs in a winning team, you can bask in that glory more.
“A lot of my decision-making, shots that I play, a lot of that is around what the team needs at that stage. Just literally trying to get my team into the best position possible and it’s as simple as that.
“That’s really helped me, and if I’ve ever started to overcomplicate things in my head, I try to come back to what does the team need from me now? Then play accordingly.”
Those impressions were redoubled for Rogers when he sat in the team viewing area at Adelaide Oval at the pointy end of Victoria’s opening Sheffield Shield game last summer.
Having struggled in recent times to chase fourth-innings totals, the visitors were teetering on a wearing pitch, with spinner Lloyd Pope ripping the ball vast distances out of the footmarks. After watching Peake’s uncertain first few balls, Rogers considered rushing out a message of advice. But before he could do so, Peake adapted, and sculpted an innings that set up Victoria’s season.
“He was playing a bit of high-risk cricket trying to hit against the spin out of the footmarks and then we were wondering whether we should get a message down to him,” Rogers said. “Then all of a sudden he figured it out before we needed to.
“The problem-solving he did through that innings was of a high standard.
“He kept the ball on the ground until the game was iced then he went aerial two or three times, little things like that, where he played low-risk cricket until the game was won, and then he took it down.”
Peake had his struggles over the remainder of the season on domestic pitches that have become decidedly seamer-friendly. But his moments of class encouraged Australia’s selectors to pick him to go to Pakistan with a white-ball squad this week, and it’s a move that Rogers endorses. Partly, because of conversations he has had with other players in the state system while coaching Victoria.
“We had a more mature player named James Seymour who killed it in Premier cricket, and he came in and played,” Rogers said. “He had a year where he got a hundred, but overall he found it quite challenging, as a lot do.
“When he was let go at the end of the season, I spoke to him and he was upset, but more with the fact that he wished he’d been asked these questions of his game when he was 21 or 22, not 28 or 29, when he had more time to come up with answers.
“We feel like it’s better to get them in to show them what they’re going to be faced with. I think with Ollie maybe the Australians are looking at it from the point of view that we think he’s going to play a lot for Australia, we really want to get him to understand the questions that are going to be asked of him early.”
Peake name-dropped two other young players of note to provide a bit of a gauge for how he saw himself. He is not Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the Indian batting supernova who has found a way to dominate the IPL before his 16th birthday with a huge swing arc and fence-clearing power.
But in his fast-track to the national set up, Peake took some inspiration from England’s Jacob Bethell, who had not made a first-class hundred before his Test selection but showed the skills and wisdom to open his account with a superb Ashes century at the SCG.
“Probably looking at guys around the world like Jacob Bethell, who’s probably been in a similar position, it’s pretty exciting,” Peake said. “It sort of gives you the belief that someone’s gotta do it, so why not you?”
For Rogers, the source of the excitement is not so much that Peake is ready. It’s that through maturity beyond his 19 years, he has a better chance than most to get there.
“There’s areas of his game he needs to work on, but he has really good awareness around that as well,” Rogers said. “No one’s perfect, but the expectation is that he’s going to find the answers. Not everyone does.”
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Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.From our partners
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