Two hours from the end of the final day of the second-last Test at the fag‑end of the post‑Bazball summer, the cheer from the Lord’s crowd at deep fine leg had something pointed about it, a crackle of event glamour. Ollie Robinson turned as he ambled back and raised an arm in gladiatorial salute. What are you rebelling against, Johnny?
Also, if you really want to know, buzzword culture and enforced fitness regimes. Sometimes, you just get the heroes you need. Moments earlier, with the Lord’s clock at 3.59pm, Robinson had struck Shan Masood on the front pad and stood with his arms out, bellowing plaintively, the appeal of a man who really, really wants to get back for Call the Midwife and a peri-peri chicken throb-box meal deal.
From the start this had been a Test that was less about what was going to happen, more just the question of when. Still, there was drama here, and confirmation of an extraordinary turnaround this summer for the bad boy of metronomic medium-nip. Robinson took four of the nine wickets needed to complete England’s 2-0 series win 45 minutes before the close.
In doing so he took his own tally to 23 at eight across the two home Test series. Here it is then, the new age, replacement, in double-quick time, for the previous new age. Welcome to the summer of Ozball.
Robinson was irresistible again en route to his four for 24, rumbling in from the Nursery End, bulky and quietly menacing, like a wardrobe rolling gently down a hill. It is all so simple in outline. The easy, high action, the perfect seam release, head up, already feeling the pitch in his fingertips, seeking out that zinging, fizzing contact.
Stump to stump, every millimetre of movement in play. As we enter the new age, perhaps we need a new kind of absurd absolutism, a world where the managing director of England cricket makes a passionate speech about needing a battery of slow-medium-nip bowlers, or thumps his palm and declares that not doodling it in with the keeper up to the stumps has absolutely no place in Test cricket. The one shame here was that Robinson ended on 99 Test wickets, taking them now at the astonishing average of 19.
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