Ollie Robinson roars back into England reckoning but trust is a fragile thing | Andy Bull
The man of the match will not be judged on his comeback at Lord’s but on his ability to bowl spells when batters are set
By 1pm, the only play left under way at Lord’s was at the wrong side of the stands, where the lads and dads with nothing else to do were batting with umbrellas in front of bins. The Test they had paid to see was done before lunch. In the end, the whole match lasted only 996 balls, which made it the shortest game at Lord’s to include all 40 wickets falling in well over a century. Pakistan’s Hanif Mohammad batted about that many by himself against West Indies in Barbados back in 1958, and you didn’t have to strain to hear the grumbles of one or two older salts around the ground complaining that this latest generation do not know how to build an innings.
Emilio Gay was the only man who managed to stitch together as many as two hours batting in the middle and even he needed a lot of good fortune to do it. Still, the batters had more of a match than the spin bowlers on either side, who didn’t get to bowl a single over between them. The last time that this happened in England was a Test against West Indies at Headingley in 1988.