For so long, it looked as though Robinson would never play for England again, certainly under this regime.<\/p>\n
England explained his exile on grounds of conditioning, on a tendency to lose pace or hobble out of matches altogether. His skills were not in doubt – Robinson averaged less than 23 with the ball in his 20 previous Tests.<\/p>\n
Humbled in Australia and in need of an attack leader, England returned to the 32-year-old. Robinson has benefitted from being given the captaincy at Sussex and admitted he has matured. <\/p>\n
If England had him bowling like this in Australia, how different might the Ashes have been?<\/p>\n
Bowling the second over of the innings, Robinson found movement down the Lord’s slope, into left-hander Conway. <\/p>\n
After two balls, captain Stokes posted a short leg and Conway instantly played all around a full ball. Robinson roared with delight, while the New Zealand batter was disgruntled to see the review showing the ball clipping leg stump.<\/p>\n
Robinson’s length was immaculate. Facing his second ball, Williamson failed to get far enough forward, looping the catch to debutant Emilio Gay at short leg.<\/p>\n
Ravindra, another left-hander, was pinned by another nip-backer. The noise was deafening.<\/p>\n
At 2-3, New Zealand were in disarray. Captain Tom Latham could have been run out by Stokes before he was lbw, getting only half-forward to Atkinson. Robinson showed his full array of skills to find seam movement up the slope, bowling Mitchell, who offered no shot.<\/p>\n
When the pacey Tongue castled Tom Blundell, New Zealand were in danger of being dismissed before the close. <\/p>\n
Glenn Phillips’ unbeaten 31, supported by Nathan Smith, somehow got them through without further loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For so long, it looked as though Robinson would never play for England again, certainly under this regime.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-483245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}