Inverarity is the only reason he got back in.
Rogers was a bit unlucky, but there's no real hard luck story imo.
Rogers made his debut in 08, i think because of a Hayden injury. Jaques was the incumbent and was doing fine - I don't think it would be fair to call Jaques a flash in the pan - and then in the West Indies tour in May 08 they decided to not bring over a back-up opener. cue another hayden injury and katich filling in as opener and scoring runs. then jaques got injured at some point but Hayden returned for the home summer to partner with Katich. he dudded it up and retired at the end of the summer, at which point The Prince Phil Hughes, who had scored a million runs in the shield, got the call. Obviously Hughes had the good SA tour and for the 09 Ashes they didn't pick a back-up opener. I don't recall what was said at the time, but looking at the squad now, it seems to me they loaded up on all-rounders in Watson, McDonald and even Marcus North, whose spinners were a factor in his original selection in SA, to help provide cover for their spinner situation, which was Hauritz but they didn't have much faith in him yet, and they backed the players in the squad to provide opening cover if need be, just like Katich did. As it turns out, they panic dropped Hughes after losing a test and threw it to Watson who had started performing well as an OD opener. The Watson/Katich partnership, with Hughes as deputy, continued until Katich got sacked because of Clarke/Katich got dropped because Australia lost the 2010/11 Ashes 3-1 and they didn't want to pick three 36yo batsmen for the SL tour.
The Hughes/Watson partnership went for a little bit but then Watson got injured. Towards the back end of the 2010/11 Shield season Warner had just started performing as an opener for NSW and in an Aus A tour in 2011 scored some runs, so he got the call to replace Watson. Then Hughes had his bad series against Chris Martin and they went with Ed Cowan because Cowan had scored like 3 tons in 4 games plus had a good couple of shield seasons prior. Fun fact: Clarke didn't want Hughes dropped and then wanted Katich picked, per Daniel Brettig's Whitewash to Whitewash but Cowan was In Form. Anyway, Cowan/Warner had a good start and they went up until the 2013 Ashes, which is when Rogers got recalled by Inverarity. (And Lehmann got made coach after Warner punched Joe Root and got suspended for the first tests, and his first statement was that Watson would return to opening. by the end of the tour, Watson wasn't opening in any format of the game)
I dunno, he was perhaps unlucky not to be named as a back-up opener in the 08 Windies Tour (which had a lot of weird stuff in the squad) and the 09 Ashes, but after that everything made logical sense imo. The cards just never fall his way.
