Reliable Robinson is the find of the summer for England
OLLIE ROBINSON has gone from misfit to England’s hottest new pace bowler after his five-wicket haul against India helped Joe Root’s team to win the third Test and square the five-match series.
It is a remarkable transformation, one which has taken Robinson almost ten years after an early opportunity with Yorkshire saw him sacked for petulance and poor timekeeping.
He gradually came to realise what was required of top-level cricketers after a move to Sussex in 2015. Once there, his strong action and analytical mind (according to one coach he is the best researched bowler of his generation) saw him thrive enough to be selected for England, an opportunity he has grasped to become one of the first names on the team sheet and a shoo-in for the Ashes.
His achievements against India this summer – he has 16 wickets against them in three matches – are no fluke.
Robinson announced himself on his Test debut against New Zealand at Lord’s earlier in the summer with seven wickets in the game.
Some players spend a career trying to get on the Lord’s honours boards (you need a Test hundred or to take five wickets in an innings to qualify) and he came within a fumbled catch of perpetuity at his first attempt – Stuart Broad dropping the sitter.
It looked then as if a serious talent had arrived or did until he was cast back into the wilderness after a series of tweets from his youth surfaced during the match. Robinson claimed he was a far different person to the one who’d made the puerile and racist comments nine years earlier.
He was fined and suspended from all cricket, including the second Test of that series.
Character is shaped by setbacks and many wondered how he’d respond when he returned to the England fold. The answer, for any
doubters, has been forthright and in two of the four Tests which comprise his international career to date, he has managed to out-bowl the legendary James Anderson, and not many do that in English conditions.
So how will he do in Australia, assuming the tour will proceed following the reluctance of many England players to travel there without assurances that their families will be able to visit?
Top class Test bowlers usually require at least two of three qualities to prosper for a long time – pace, accuracy and the ability to move the ball laterally through swing or seam.
Robinson does not possess real pace, being 80-84mph, but that is
quick enough when you have the other two, which he does. Of course in Australia, any movement, at least laterally, is usually limited to the first ten overs, after which the Kookaburra ball loses its venom.
It is possible, however, to get extra bounce on hard Aussie pitches and this is where Robinson’s height, he stands 6ft 4in, should come in handy.
His challenge out there, especially for a man who likes to study batsmen and how to bowl at them, is in not getting bored of probing a persistent line and length without variation.
Apparently, Robinson reveres Glenn McGrath, the great Australian pace bowler, and his tactic was to hammer away at that line of least resistance just outside off-stump. So Robinson should keep researching opponents but chuck away any theories. Bowling in Oz is all about creating pressure on the batsmen and maintaining it until something gives.
We could get to see an early audition of that strategy during the concluding two Tests against India; the Oval and Old Trafford being the two pitches in England that most resemble playing surfaces in Australia. That’s if Robinson plays in both matches and is not rested.
Being new to Test cricket, playing five Tests in 42 days will be a shock to his system. Of course it is easy to keep energy levels up when wickets are always in the offing, as they were at Headingley, but there has been the odd occasion during the series where Robinson has flagged in his second and third spells in an innings.
His physique suggests he is probably not the most ardent fitness fanatic but flogging yourself to be super fit, as Ben Stokes has done and which cricketers must strive to do while on the road, means the mind does not get a break.
And this game is played there as much as anywhere.
The irony for Robinson is that had some of England’s first choice bowlers been available this summer – Stokes, Jofra Archer and Chris Woakes – then he would have probably remained in semi-obscurity back at Sussex. His emergence as a reliable wicket-taker whose is dependably accurate, has made him the find of the summer.
He also gives England the real, as opposed to wishful, option of rotating Anderson and Broad.
Just imagine a bowling attack of Anderson/Broad, Archer, Robinson, Stokes plus Moeen Ali/ Jack Leach as the spinner.
Now that really might make up for England’s shortcomings with the bat.