Ollie Robinson: Stokes’ hundred was better than Headingley – we should be talking about that, not the Bairstow incident

The cricket we’ve been playing has been entertaining but now it’s time to knuckle down and try and keep the series alive. We still want to go out there and play aggressive cricket, so I don’t think you’re going to see any change there. But there’s that understanding that we really need to pull something out of the bag in this game to keep it going. There’s definitely that real focus that this is it and we need to really perform.

I don’t think we’re too far away. I think the Aussies have played to quite high in their potential, and we’re still searching for that game where we don’t miss any chances and batters get hundreds instead of fifties and bowlers are consistent the whole game. We haven’t really put together a solid game yet, there’s been a lot of mistakes from all parties, and I think if we can string together some serious performances, there’s a good chance that it will be two-all going into the Oval. We won three in a row in Pakistan, we won three in a row last year against New Zealand. It’s not like the team’s not done it before. And there’s a lot of confidence in the dressing room that we can do that again.

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We went with a short-ball strategy in the second innings, and they lost 77 for seven. So there’s definitely that belief in our camp that we can turn them over. That tactic was down the pitch. The Lord’s pitch was very two-paced, and you saw some balls were flying through and Jonny was taking them above head height and others weren’t even reaching him on the second bounce. And as a batter that’s really hard to line up.

[caption id=”attachment_304302″ align=”alignnone” width=”1200″] Ollie Robinson was the most economical among England bowlers in the second innings, his spell reading 26-11-48-2[/caption]

I’ve bowled long spells for Sussex in county cricket, but the intensity at which you do it in a Test match is higher. Eighteen months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to bowl a nine-over spell of bumpers, but I’ve been training hard to get back in the team and then keep my place, and even if I can’t feel my legs, that want to win is always going to get me through. Everyone’s pushing each other to the max, and we’ve got bowlers lining up to come in, so if you’re not doing your job, there’s someone else that will. Towards the end of their first innings I felt I’d got back a bit of my speed and my rhythm, and my accuracy was better. I was fighting the want to do well and maybe trying too hard, but I relaxed into it and feel like I’m in a good place now.

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There’s always something that people want to talk about isn’t there? In the first Test it was me and Khawaja, the second Test it’s the Bairstow incident. There’s always going to be things that people pick up on. It’s a shame that the game as a whole hasn’t been spoken about as much because it was another absolute thriller and in both of the first two games that we’ve played, you’ve seen some great Test cricket and some really exciting finishes, but other things have taken the limelight.

For us to create this legacy that we want to create, we need to speak about how good the games have been and how exciting people have found them, not about little incidents that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really affect how cricket is going to be played in years to come. With the Bairstow incident, people feel hard done by on the England side, and I’ve seen a few articles from the Australians where they think we’re spitting our dummies out. It’s always going to be that way in sport, you’ve got two teams, and you’re always going to have people that agree and disagree.

I was next in after Broady, so I was getting my whites on and getting padded up for five or 10 minutes just in a bit of shock after Alex Carey threw the stumps down. It wasn’t until 15 or 20 minutes later that I watched it again and realised how weird it was. Jonny wasn’t attempting a run, he wasn’t trying to get any advantage, but they’d obviously seen something and I’ve read a few comments that they’d seen him do it a few balls before. It’s a fine line, isn’t it? Stokesy has said that if the shoe was on the other foot we would have called him back. That’s not the way that we want to play, or the way that we want to win games of cricket. But at the same time, laws are there to be played to and the fact that the laws state it’s out, I don’t think you can have too many arguments about that side of it. The question is about the spirit of the game but it’s such a vital point in the game and sometimes emotions can get the better of people, and in such a big series I think it’s understandable.

[caption id=”attachment_304306″ align=”alignnone” width=”1200″] Robinson: Don’t think we will ever see another cricketer like Ben Stokes for a long time[/caption]

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The passage of play after Jonny got out was captivating. We were all watching Broady at one end getting stuck into the Aussies and watching Stokesy at the other end whacking it all over the place. Before Stokesy goes into bat he’s always the same person. It wasn’t until the Jonny incident when I thought, he is really not the guy you want to fire up, because he will tear you apart. And in the next two hours, he proceeded to take their bowlers apart. Some people have got that switch in them where they go into a different gear and Stokesy did that on Sunday. And for an hour or so you saw the Aussies lose the plot a little bit, they really didn’t know what to do or where to bowl. That’s the power and the impact that Stokesy has on the cricket field. It’s a shame that he couldn’t get us all the way but it was still one of the best knocks I’ve ever seen in my life.

That was definitely better than the knock he played at Headingley. The way he commanded the whole innings was incredible. I don’t think we will ever see another cricketer like that for a long time. He’s capturing imaginations and making people want to play cricket when they grow up. I think everyone at the moment wants to be Ben Stokes, and so do I!

Ollie Robinson will be writing for Wisden.com throughout the Ashes.