His county is in “special measures” and his international career was still in the toilet as recently as March. Ollie Robinson is redeemed, in conditions a seam bowler could only fantasise about. The salvation of England’s Test team after the Ashes farrago will take a little longer.
Still healing, and with management encouraged to learn the error of their ways, England have seen fan despair shunted aside by indignation over the state of the most fabled 22 yards in cricket: the Lord’s pitch, which senior figures in the game say is way below Test match standard.
If England needed a deflection for the big “reset”, the home of cricket provided it. Celebrations for the 150th Lord’s Test started out as a parade of proud reflection. Nostalgia’s glow was meant to warm a cold, damp crowd. Daisy cutters and befuddling bounce, though, are not what a venue needs when it’s trying to reinforce its image as the game’s cathedral.
But England haven’t needed anything to hide behind in a fast-forward match. Without multiple rain breaks, this Test would have been over before the Epsom Derby, in less than three days. As an event, so soon after the two-day Tests of Perth and Melbourne, it has been unsettling for red ball cricket.
When the rain abated and sun broke through around midday, the match umpires decided the day’s only splash of fine weather would be a good time to take an early lunch (12.20-1pm). When the players returned, so did the rain. As Nasser Hussain said on commentary: “When the weather was good we were eating. When the weather’s bad, we try to play cricket. That can’t be right.”
There was no action between 2.10pm and play being abandoned at 5.30pm. Somehow a caper in which 16 wickets fell on day one and 17 were lost on day two has still managed to be compelling.
For England, there have been shafts of light: Emilio Gay’s debut, as Zak Crawley’s replacement, and a more balanced approach from his partner Ben Duckett, who inched away from machismo in favour of game management. Harry Brook continues to look torn between what he is and what he will need to be to fulfil his talent. Most striking of all has been the unlikely return of a bowler who had become a pariah but now has a five-fer on the Lord’s honours board.
In the morning session, before lunch became such a pressing concern, New Zealand resumed on 36-3 needing 218 runs to win. Robinson had other ideas. First he bowled Rachin Ravindra, who has had a wretched trip to St John’s Wood, dropping two easy catches and scoring nought and eight with the bat. Then he trapped Daryl Mitchell lbw for a duck for his seventh wicket.
As spring dawned in Hove, the returning England hero role would have been hard to pin to Robinson. Sussex began the County Championship with a 12-point penalty for breaking operating loss restrictions. Rob Key and Brendon McCullum had bowed to pressure to restore the ring-round to counties to correct the impression that England had become a job for life, closed to aspiring county men.
Robinson was one of those spoken to. England needed a shake-up, Jofra Archer was at the IPL. It was time to revive the cliché about players “banging the door down” to catch the eye of selectors. That was the message to Robinson, who had 76 wickets from 20 Tests at an average below 23 - but hadn’t played for England in 829 days.
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An apology in 2021 for racist and sexist texts sent in 2012 and 2013 were the first indication that Robinson’s England career would not be seamless. It was the tour of India in 2024 though that did for him.
His “conditioning” was one reason for him being discarded. Another, the Guardian reported, was the podcast he made on tour with his now wife Mia Baker. A visa error by England’s management was made public, along with details of a luxury “private jet” the team had been invited to take.
Baker is an influencer and it’s fair to say England weren’t keen on that craze creeping into camp. Two and a half years later, Baker showed herself on Instagram weeping at Robinson’s five-wicket haul.
After a 27-month absence, you would want the pitch and conditions to give you an edge. Robinson, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson were gifted a chance here to lay memories of the bowling department’s troubles in Australia to rest. The spinner Shoaib Bashir, who didn’t bowl a single ball in the Ashes, is unlikely to turn his arm over here either.
On Thursday, 12 former England captains who led England in Lord’s Tests lined up in front of the pavilion. They ranged from Mike Brearley to Alistair Cook. It was meant as a celebration of the 150th Test. But what stood out was how different they all were, as characters. Evidently there is no archetype for a captain.
Stokes would have broadened the storyboard further. But he still has important work to do: pulling England out of the hole they fell into in the Ashes. Nobody could have guessed that the first to get stuck in would be Robinson, 32, who has come in from the wilderness, and has given himself a chance not to go back there.