Ollie Robinson hasn't played for England for more than two years, but with Test places up for grabs at the start of the summer, he's in a better position than ever before to force a recall.
Two weeks before the start of the season, Ollie Robinson lounged on a bench in some early spring sun on the South coast, and said: “As much as I obviously want to play for England again, I need to take wickets and rip up trees to receive that call”.
England management have issued a challenge to county cricketers in the early part of the season, one that reflects Robinson’s own assessment of what he needs to do. Following the disastrous Ashes which has cast doubt on several of the most staunchly backed selections of the McCullum-Stokes era, there are Test places up for grabs – ‘so come and get them’. In the opening round of the Championship, Robinson answered. He took five wickets to secure Sussex a hefty first innings lead, heading an attack shorn of the overseas stars it’s boasted in previous seasons.
It was Robinson’s first match as Sussex captain, and a timely reminder of why he was once ranked as one of the best red-ball bowlers in the world. It also highlighted how jarring it is that the last time he played a Test match for England was two years ago.
How he got to this point is well documented. Fitness concerns over his ability to sustain the workload required across a heavy Test series first surfaced publically in Australia in 2021, when then England bowling coach Jon Lewis blasted him to the media after he broke down during the fifth Test. Those fitness concerns bled into the following year, with Robinson missing the first home series of the Bazball era, before he roared back in Pakistan, having admitted there were times that year he never thought he would play for England again.
That’s the same position Robinson has now been in over the last two years, after his fitness broke again under the pressure of a long Test series in India in 2024. This time, whatever trust was built over the 18 months where Robinson was teed up to be the next leader of England’s attack, seems to have been irrevocably broken. It’s both on-field trust, that Robinson won’t leave his fellow pacers one short, with other tired and injury-prone bodies picking up the slack, and the off-field trust he’s found hard to repair following well-publicised struggles in his personal life.
“I gave [Ben] Stokes a text before the Ashes, and said ‘good luck, hope your boys tear it up’. But I haven't spoken to anyone since,” Robinson said. “I've probably not spoken to anyone for 18 months really.”
That’s 18 months of silence where Robinson could easily have been England’s attack leader. In early 2023, he was ranked No.4 in the ICC’s Test rankings. A year later, when England decided to shuffle James Anderson into early retirement and bring through the next leader of the Test attack, they turned back to Chris Woakes, who stepped up when Robinson had a back spasm which left him unable to bowl during the Headingley Ashes Test in 2023. With Woakes leading, and Mark Wood fit again, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue were put on the Australia-Ashes fast track.
Robinson was cast aside and, while it was never explicitly said, those black marks next to his name seemed as if they might always outweigh any wickets he took in domestic cricket. It appeared as if England felt Robinson wasn't worth the trouble, and that they could find bowlers as good as him without the baggage attached. But as promising as Atkinson, Carse and Tongue have been, none have come close to producing what Robinson can at his best.
For what it’s worth, Robinson has a different assessment of where he stood with England after being dropped. “The door might have felt closed, but you've got to force it open,” he said. “I have no doubt that if I had taken 60 wickets in the 2024 summer, that conversation might have happened. Apparently, I fell out with England management, which I didn't realise.”
Things are different now, for Robinson and England. He spent the winter in Australia playing grade cricket, and his new role as Sussex captain places greater emphasis in ensuring he is fit enough to play every County Championship round. More significantly, England simply don’t have the strength in numbers to continue not picking him should his Championship numbers continue to climb. All of the seamers they backed were found wanting in the Ashes, and while there’s no guarantee Robinson wouldn’t also have struggled had he been selected, that particular black mark doesn’t sit against his name as it does theirs. In the opening round of the Championship, among the pack of county seamers hoping to stick their hand up for the start of the Test summer, Robinson stood tallest.
There’s also a sense after the Ashes disaster that some of the more controversial selection decisions the McCullum-Key-Stokes management have made might not fly as easily. Having prioritised gut-feel at the expense of their relationship with first-class counties, Championship performances should carry more weight now, at least at the start of their second act. An older Robinson, hungry once again and skillful, could provide direction to a flat, and at points rudderless, attack.
Equally, any snarl England’s attack had in Australia was silenced as they toiled in the heat. It contrasted with the grizzled bark of those who went toe-to-toe with Australia just two years before, when Robinson led the hostilities against Usman Khawaja at Edgbaston, setting the tone for the series. At his best, Robinson is combative, and gets under the skin of oppositions – without him and Broad and Anderson, and even Jonny Bairstow behind the stumps, England have only intermittently had players able to do that.
Ultimately, Robinson hasn’t yet done enough to climb to the top of the pecking order waiting to come in. He took 39 wickets in each of the last two seasons – decent returns without, in his own words, “ripping up trees”. This season is his best chance to force the issue, and confront whether enough time has passed for the trust he lost with England can start being rebuilt. Or, whether circumstances now mean the relationship between Robinson and the England dressing room has to heal, regardless of whether the ashes of the bridges previously burnt are still smouldering.
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