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In a winter of regret for the England Test team, one question went surprisingly unasked: how might they have fared on Australia’s spicy pitches had Ollie Robinson not been persona non grata?
Now, ahead of Friday’s second round of County Championship matches, with Robinson captaining Sussex against Warwickshire at Hove, coming off the back of a five-for to set up victory against Leicestershire, there is a more pressing question: can English cricket really afford the stand-off to continue?
Much has been said and written about the fall from grace of a bowler who, according to his former Test team-mate Mark Wood, ‘can nip it on glass’. But the basic numbers tell their own tale – and it is one that ought to pain England as they look to build an attack capable of winning back the Ashes in 2027.
In his 20 Tests, Robinson has 76 wickets at under 23 – the lowest average for an England bowler with at least 50 wickets since Ken Higgs in 1968. More than that, Robinson has used his natural height and bounce to keep batsmen honest: since his debut in 2021, the only England bowler with a better economy rate than his 2.75 has been Jimmy Anderson.
But perhaps the most revealing number, the one that ought to make both the selectors and Robinson himself wince at the wastefulness of it all, has been the 40 Tests he has missed for one reason or another since taking seven for 101 on debut against New Zealand at Lord’s in 2021.
The Robinson conundrum boils down to a simple question, and it is one England have asked themselves until they are blue in the face: does he care enough to put in the work that separates seam-bowling wannabes from Test-match winners? And here the jury remains out.
Ollie Robinson celebrates trapping Australia No 3 Marnus Labuschagne lbw while playing for Sussex against Glamorgan – might the Ashes have panned out differently if he’d been picked?
Robinson with his wife Mia Baker, a golf influencer, whom he credits with helping him relocate his ‘happy place’ after he split from his long-term fiancee Lauren Rose Pullen
Now 32, he said recently he was ‘ready, physically and mentally, to play for England again’ after more than two years in purdah – a period in which, he says, he was ‘able to sort my life out’. That includes marriage to the golf influencer Mia Baker, whom he credits with helping him relocate his ‘happy place’ after he split from his long-term fiancee Lauren Rose Pullen (they have a young daughter) and fell out of love with cricket.
But he has talked a good game before, not least before the 2022 summer when new Test captain Ben Stokes spoke to him to explain that he needed to do more to win back his place, after his fitness was publicly denounced by England bowling coach Jon Lewis towards the end of the previous winter’s Ashes in Hobart.
And, for a while, things went well – so well that Robinson felt emboldened to describe himself as one of the ‘Three Amigos’, a reference to his blossoming relationship with Anderson and Stuart Broad.
Confidence was never a problem. During a team meeting early in his England career, Robinson recalls taking the ‘royal p***’ out of Anderson: ‘He laughed but everyone else went silent – as if no one should take the mick out of Jimmy Anderson. But I did, and he enjoyed the fact that I’d treated him as a normal person.’
At a drinks break during the Oval Test against South Africa in 2022, Robinson objected to Stokes’s plan to take him off. Stokes said: ‘Robbo, stop being so selfish, it’s not all about you.’ Robinson responded: ‘I just want to win the game for the team.’
Back in the dressing room, Stokes brought up the incident. According to Robinson: ‘Everyone went silent – there was a bit of tension. But he said he loved the fact I questioned it, and wanted a win for the team, not for myself.’
He was willing to speak up. But others wondered how much he was willing to put in, amid suggestions he expected the Broad-Anderson mantle to come his way automatically.
Whispers of an attitude problem peaked in India in early 2024, when Robinson suffered his latest back spasm during the crucial fourth Test at Ranchi, and was then said to have been unenthusiastic about training during the fifth at Dharamsala.
For a while, things went so well that Robinson described himself as one of the ‘Three Amigos’, referencing his relationship with Jimmy Anderson (right) and Stuart Broad (second left)
If Robinson really has rediscovered his mojo, he can play Test cricket once more – and rewrite a narrative that currently has him down as the most squandered talent of his generation
That, for Stokes, was the last straw. Meanwhile, Rob Key, England’s managing director, pointedly described him as ‘one of the best bowlers in the world at 83mph, but not at 75mph’.
Robinson, who turned out during the winter for Sydney University in Australian grade cricket, admitted recently that he has not done himself ‘any favours’, but still seems puzzled by how things ended: ‘Apparently I fell out with the England management, which I didn’t realise.’
That in itself may ring a familiar alarm bell among the hierarchy. And yet Key’s comment hints at a possible route back, especially given that the retirement of Chris Woakes has created room for a skilful new-ball practitioner in the Test side.
Robinson, Sam Cook and Matthew Potts – even after his Ashes nightmare at Sydney – must all be in the frame.
If Robinson really has rediscovered his mojo, and if England learn to trust him again, he can play Test cricket once more – and rewrite a narrative that currently has him down as the most squandered talent of his generation.