Each age makes its own heroes. Two hours from the end of the final day of the second-last Test at the fagāend of the postāBazball summer, the cheer from the Lordās 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. āOh Ollie Ollie, Ollie Ollie Ollie Ollie Robinsonā was the response from a scattered, woozy swell, again with something arch and transgressive in it, the smell of anti-hero. What are you rebelling against, Johnny? What have you got? 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 Lordās 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 Englandās 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. Simple. You try doing it.
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. He really does deserve a nickname by this stage. The Butcher of Margate. The Sussex Strangler. Perhaps a variation on the great fastābowling monikers. White Drizzle. Whispering Chronic Illness. The Hove Stopping Train. Pace Like Air Conditioning.
Plus, once Robinson gets to that hundred-wicket mark he will be officially the greatest Test bowler since the first world war. Kind of. OK, not really. But the numbers are still mind-boggling.
The main case for Robinson-as-GOAT is simple enough. No pace bowler since the 19th century has ended their career with 100 wickets at a lower average. And yes, others have got to that mark at a similar rate, but Robinson is 32, heās not got to have any real decline. This is him.
Either way he can now claim to be an all-time Test great, and nobody can really argue, or why even bother with the numbers? Odd to think Robinson was dropped a few games back because Rob Key likes pace, along with some notābeingātheārightākindāofāguy stuff. Heās very good. Get the best out of him. Thatās the job.
Here Robinson took the new ball in the fourth innings, and just kept on looming up to the stumps like a weather front barreling in off the Ramsgate coast. There was an amusingly forthright send-off for Abdullah Shafique, knocked over by an unplayable nippābacker, the kind of delivery where the batterās shape makes the moment, turned around, playing for logic, the actual line, and getting instead magic, weirdness, parallax error.
At that point Robinson had six for 13 in the match, and you thought, well, why not 13 for 13? Would Pakistan actually score another run here? In the end a total of 194 was built around a splendid 97 from Saud Shakeel, who played beautifully, all swivelāpulls and courtly, kneeling cover drives, the kind of shot that brings a digestive mid-afternoon gurgle from the crowd.
Otherwise it was another slow-burn day in a slow-burn summer, a day for asking, what does it mean, why this, why here? Lordās on an autumn Sunday will do this to you. The entire Lordās industrial complex is full of places that feel like jarring tautologies. Lordās Museum. Lordās Gin Bar. Lordās Picnic Garden. Itās fine. You can just say āLordāsā. What else is it but a gin-soaked picnic museum? You might as well make a sign saying welcome to the Lordās red-trousered men assembly point, the Lordās cultural ossification hub.
There is an issue here with the dominance of bowling, and above all a certain kind of bowling. Earlier in the day Mohammad Abbas could be seen kneeling at the edge of the square and kissing the reddish scrub of the Lordās outfield, a beautiful spectacle, a man giving thanks to the god of crap Test pitches, in praise of shit-tip Jehovah, spirit guide of his own remarkable Test figures.
This is obviously unfair. Abbas is a brilliant bowler and a lovely guy. Heās on the honours board. He gets his wickets at 22, and in the best way, all brain, craft and skill. It is a method that has become very now. Look up the top nine lowest career bowling averages since the end of the 19th century and four of those nine have appeared in the past six years.
These are: Robinson, Kyle Jamieson, Scott Boland and Axar Patel. All brilliant bowlers. All with the same basic method: fizzed straight stuff to Test batters who canāt deal with it. Look back over the summer of Ozball, and Abbas, Robinson and Matt Henry together have 45 wickets at 12, keeper stood up, front pads blowing up, crowd gripped by the spectacle of low-level apocalypse.
Test cricket should be a bowlerās game. It is even more this with data analysis, raised seams and format confusion for batting techniques. As Ian Chappell said recently on the Grade Cricketer, there is very little financial incentive to become a great Test batsman now, no way weāre ever getting another Graham Gooch spending three winter months just working out how to defend his front pad.
Maybe Bazball was right. Maybe we just need flat, quick pitches you can score on. Otherwise itās Ozball, the age of high-craft jag and nip, and Test matches that become a race to the end, in more ways than one.
Not that anyone minded much here, on a day where that Robinson redemption arc was confirmed as the low-key story of a low-key summer.
