From Ollie Robinson's perspective, English Test cricket this summer has been pretty good, you know.
Think about it. The first Test of the summer, against New Zealand at Lord's, saw him recalled after two years and 24 matches, not just on the sidelines but completely out of the reckoning. Not only was he back, but he was framed as the remedy to a bowling attack that had been without a relentless seamer or attack leader, and not as confrontational as they needed to be during the winter's Ashes. He was the solution hiding in plain sight.
His first act? A triple-wicket maiden in his first over, on his way to a fourth five-wicket haul and a first appearance on the Lord's honours board. A further two in the second innings netted Robinson the player-of-the-match award in England's first victory of a new era. Head coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes had warned the hard work starts here, but his long-awaited 21st Test cap hadn't seemed particularly taxing.
Cue the first day of Robinson's second Test this season, a series opener against Pakistan at Headingley which began with a wicket off the very first ball of the match. Six hours, but just 48 overs later, he was walking off hand-in-hand with Josh Tongue. The pair had split 10 wickets between them, but it was Robinson in possession of the match ball as they left the field for the more valuable haul, containing four of the visiting top five. They eventually decided to split it in half. It was a second new edition to the Robinson household in the last week after the 2am arrival of his second child last Thursday.
Robinson's Test average is currently 21.25. His average from halfway through his 12th home Test is 18.4 - lower than those of James Anderson (24.41) and Stuart Broad (25.92). As far as the 32-year old is concerned, he has excelled at everything asked of him in a post-Australia rebuild, including bringing promise of a world beyond Anderson and Broad that need not be so bleak.
The problem, however, is the collateral housed between Robinson's two appearances. English Test cricket has been on a hellish journey, of high-profile loss and deep soul-searching. The kind that would make Odysseus wonder if he might was better off staying put.
That journey is still not over, despite Robinson's impact on Wednesday, which was closed out by Joe Root and Jordan Cox taking England to within 59 of Pakistan's lowly first innings of 171 - just two-down and in sight of a much-needed home win after the 2-1 defeat to New Zealand.
Stokes' stunning retirement and McCullum's cold sacking adds novelty to Robinson's appearances, which have now come under two different captains and coaches. He'll be playing under a third coach soon enough, with the newly appointed Stephen Fleming watching on from afar, no doubting mapping out what his version of this team will look like. Robinson has surely put himself front and centre of Fleming's plans.
There was a time, not so long ago, that Robinson's attitude - primarily around fitness, but also his team ethic - was regarded as an irredeemable problem. It will not be lost on him that, even in these fleeting appearances, he has emerged as a rare pillar of stability.
He was certainly that for Root on Wednesday, in what little cricket was possible following a three-hour pause for rain.
The consistency of his opening eight-over spell - the first five before the rain arrived at 10:51am - allowed Root to yank Jofra Archer out of the attack after two wasteful maidens with the new ball. It was the kind of proactive captaincy Root would not have made during his first five-year stint in the role. But already he seems a little surer of himself, and the comfort of Robinson settling immediately into a groove with his first-ball wicket of Azan Awais, and with another new-ball bowler Gus Atkinson waiting in the wings, it was a correct and ballsy play. Robinson softened the risk when he squared up Shan Masood with his first delivery from over the wicket. Two balls later, Atkinson took over at the Football Stand End.
Robinson's second eight-over spell was even more impressive, and included the wickets of half-centurion Abdullah Shafique and the dangerous Saud Shakeel. The former was bowled through the gate with Jamie Smith up to the stumps. The latter fortuitously seen off with an LBW dismissal that was headed over the top. Shakeel was two seconds off calling for a review that would have saved him.
Khurram Shahzad's hack across the line brought about Robinson's fifth five-for, with Atkinson's catch at mid-on an anomaly in his otherwise metronomic 18 overs. He sat on a length for 78.7 percent of that spell, which was in contrast to Tongue's more scattergun approach - he conceded eight boundaries to Robinson's five despite sending down 53 fewer deliveries.
It's worth noting the time in between Robinson's two Tests has not been smooth sailing for him either. He missed the second New Zealand Test at the Oval with soreness in his right knee and, though deemed fit for selection for the series decider at Trent Bridge, was left out for Stokes' final Test XI. It felt, if only from afar, as if Robinson had not fully earned back the now-former skipper's trust.
"It was frustrating not to be able to play at the Oval," Robinson said at stumps on day one. "It was 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? I was ready to go, but not selected."
Though he ramped up his training to ensure that would not happen again, a stumbling block came in the form of an awkward neck injury limiting Robinson to a single T20 for Sussex in the 52 days after the end of the Lord's Test. Thankfully, a run of One-Day Cup matches, bowling his full allocation across the board, gave him 40 overs' worth of tuning-up ahead of the Pakistan series.
Even before the squad for this Pakistan series was announced, Robinson knew he would be a part of it following encouraging chats with managing director Rob Key, the last man standing of the leadership triumvirate that had been brought together in 2022. And when Robinson was told he would be starting, there was a certainty to the senior role he would occupy.
England, even with their wealth of seamers, were in a weaker position than at the start of the summer, at which point the management could keep Robinson on edge. They did so privately and publicly; the most notable utterance being Key's suggestion that Robinson was world-class *if* he operates regularly "around 82 or 82mph". At Lord's, he averaged 80.3mph with a top speed of 82.3mph. Here, that was 78.4mph with a high of 82.5mph.
As it happens, the jeopardy Robinson now feels comes internally, governed partly by that initial return, specifically his non-selection at Trent Bridge.
"You never want to miss games," Robinson said. "You always want to play for England and you always want influence the games in the series. Unfortunately I missed that game (third New Zealand Test), but I'm going to try and not let that happen again.
"At the moment I probably feel as good as I've ever felt. I'm probably not in as good a rhythm. I know it sounds silly after [taking] wickets, but I'm probably not in as good a rhythm as I would like, having not played red-ball cricket since Lord's. But I think for me, the more I play, the, the better I tend to get.
Just as it was after the summer's first Test, it's far too early to extrapolate what the remainder of Robinson's international career may look like, one day into his second. Especially given this is a Pakistan batting card low on confidence that was thrust in on a tasty Headingley pitch.
Like Lord's, Headingley was another good start for a bowler whose skill has never been doubted. The difference, two months on, is that England need Robinson a lot more than they did back then, and perhaps more than they ever have.