Headingley’s ground staff have tended that square for well over a century, but few will have been handed a job quite like Wednesday evening’s. Ollie Robinson had five wickets on his Test return. Josh Tongue had five of his own. There was, inconveniently, only one match ball. So England’s team manager, Wayne Bentley, carried it down the stairs and asked whether it might be cut cleanly in two.
It could. Within five minutes it was back upstairs in halves, one each. The souvenir is a trinket; what it commemorates is not. Robinson’s 5-51 and Tongue’s 5-46 removed Pakistan for 171 in 48.1 overs and handed Joe Root the most serene start imaginable to his second spell as England captain, the hosts closing day one on 112-2, BBC Sport reported.
Why Ollie Robinson’s five wickets bought him half a cricket ball
A bowler keeps the ball after a five-wicket haul, the way a footballer keeps it after a hat-trick. Two five-fors in one innings breaks the custom, and the pair found the fix as they walked off hand in hand.
“We were walking off and I was like, to Tonguey, I think we should split it,” Robinson told his post-match press conference, quoted by ESPNcricinfo. “It’s one of those things, you don’t have too many half-of-cricket-balls, so it would be something we never forget. It’s not very often two guys get five-for in the same innings, so a nice gesture and something to remember.”
Tongue, on BBC Test Match Special, handed the credit to his senior partner: “Robbo said we can split the ball in half. The ground staff have kindly done that. It’s the first time I’ve seen that happen. I’m sure I’ll be putting that up somewhere.”
Rarity is the point. ESPNcricinfo records this as only the 16th time two England bowlers have taken five wickets in the same innings of a men’s Test, and the first since Steve Harmison and Monty Panesar managed it against Pakistan at Old Trafford in 2006.
Two years in exile, then a wicket with the first ball of the series
For Robinson the half-ball is not really about statistics. This was his first Test since facing New Zealand at Lord’s, itself a comeback after two years out of the side. A knee problem then removed him from the next match of that series and he was left out at Trent Bridge for Ben Stokes’ farewell; England lost both games and the series.
“It was frustrating not to be able to play at the Oval,” he told the Guardian. “Just a bit of a freak training injury and then I was available for Trent Bridge but not selected, and I suppose that’s part of professional sport, isn’t it?”
The answer, when it came, was emphatic. Root won the toss and bowled; Robinson nipped the very first ball of the series back into Azan Awais and had him leg before, then removed four of the top five, hitting a full length with unbroken discipline. Tongue, nicknamed “The Mop”, cleaned up the tail with a burst of 4-5 in 11 balls.
There was a private landmark too. Robinson and his wife, Mia, welcomed their daughter Eva in the early hours of last Thursday. “I’ve been catching up on my sleep since I got to the hotel in Leeds,” he said.
What it means for day two
England had won nothing by Wednesday’s close, only a position: 59 behind with eight wickets standing, Root unbeaten on 37 alongside Jordan Cox. Our full day one report from Headingley sets out how the tourists lost their last eight wickets for 74, and our look at the numbers behind Root’s second tenure explains why he wanted the ball in his bowlers’ hands first.
What Robinson has bought himself is harder to quantify than a wicket column. A month ago he was a luxury item in a crowded seam attack. On Thursday morning he walks out as its most reliable component, carrying half a cricket ball in his kitbag and, for the first time in two years, no obvious argument against his selection.
