IN cricket, they say the test of a truly great batsman is how often they score a half-century, then go on to convert it into a hundred. For strikers on the football field, the equivalent would be scoring two goals, then adding another to claim a hat-trick.

Since starting his professional career with a loan spell at Braintree in 2012, Middlesbrough striker Britt Assombalonga has scored two goals in a game on 21 separate occasions. Only twice, however, he has notched a third to claim the match ball.

It is hardly something that is going to keep him awake at night, but with his brace against Birmingham City on Wednesday making it three two-goal tallies in his 18 games as a Boro player, the 24-year-old admits he cannot wait to record his first treble.

It almost arrived against the Blues, but passes went astray as he found himself in some excellent positions in the second half, and when substitute Patrick Bamford did eventually square the ball towards him, he was just unable to make contact as he stretched inside the six-yard box with the goal seemingly at his mercy.

Incredibly, only three Middlesbrough players have ever scored a hat-trick at the Riverside – Fabrizio Ravanelli, Marco Branca and Afonso Alves – and while team targets will always trump individual ambitions, Assombalonga admits adding his name to that list is on his to-do list for the remainder of the campaign.

“It’s going to come soon,” he said, in the wake of Tuesday’s win, which lifted Boro back into the play-off places ahead of tomorrow’s home game with Derby County. “It should have come against Birmingham, but someone just didn’t want me to score that third goal.

“I’m a striker, so you’re never content when you’ve scored two goals. I wanted to win 6-0 and score six goals, but it’s life isn’t it? At the end of the day, we won 2-0 and kept another clean sheet. But I am looking forward to the day when I score more than two.”

The last time that happened was in Nottingham Forest’s 5-3 win over Fulham in September 2014, but while Assombalonga’s first Middlesbrough hat-trick remains elusive, his sparkling performances since his club-record summer move have been a major factor in the Teessiders’ steady rise up the table.

Last weekend’s defeat at Leeds United was a blip, but either side of that game, Garry Monk’s side have started to look like genuine promotion contenders.

Admittedly, they have played some of the poorest sides in the league, and tomorrow’s game with a Derby team on the same number of points in the table will provide a much better reflection of exactly where Boro stand.

They can be content with their work on Wednesday though, with the comfort of their victory answering some of the more pointed questions that were directed their way after they lost at Leeds.

“That was the main thing the manager talked about in the build-up to the game – not dropping points in back-to-back games,” said Assombalonga. “I think we proved a point. We showed that we’re still contenders in this Championship.

“People talk about the Leeds defeat, but we’ve won four games out of five now and when you look at it like that, it looks and sounds good.

"Obviously, we lost the Leeds game and that was very disappointing. It’s a big thing to lose to Leeds. But the bigger picture is that we are still making progress. Our last game is a win, and now we just have to take that on to the next one.”

While Monk was chopping and changing his attacking line-up at the start of the season, the Boro boss has settled on partnering Assombalonga with Martin Braithwaite in recent weeks.

The pair have played together as out-and-out strikers on occasion, but Wednesday’s game saw Braithwaite drop slightly deeper to fill the ‘number ten’ role.

The Dane’s footballing intelligence and movement make him a major threat when he is free to drift around the field, and his ability to thread a pass through an opposition defence is a major help to Assombalonga.

“It’s nice to have Martin playing in that role,” said Boro’s leading scorer. “As a central striker, it’s always good to be playing with a number ten that you know can turn. All you have to do is make sure your movement is right, and try to create some space for him to find you.

“I think we did that pretty well. My movement might make something happen, but it’s the players around you that make things happen too.”