LORD’S – He had sat on the marble bath in the home dressing room at Lord’s five years ago, phone in hand, convinced his Test career was finished before it had properly begun. On Thursday, Ollie Robinson walked back to fine leg to the kind of acclaim that ground reserves for its most theatrical moments, having just taken three wickets in four balls in the first over of New Zealand’s reply, and the question of whether England’s attack had found its leader again had answered itself before the umpires had even called drinks.
England closed the opening day of the first Rothesay Test trailing 79 runs, with New Zealand on 61 for 6 after being put in to bat – though put in is perhaps too clean a phrase for what had just unfolded. The day produced 16 wickets in total, chewed up by a slow, nibbly pitch, persistent cloud cover and three separate rain interruptions. It bore an almost eerie resemblance to the first day of the June 2022 Bazball launch at the same ground, when 17 wickets fell and England’s 141 all out proved enough of a launchpad. The scoreline this time, 140 all out, suggests history may be tempted to repeat.
Kyle Jamieson got there first. The rangy New Zealand seamer, absent from Test cricket since February 2024 after successive back stress fractures, bounded in from the Nursery End and produced a spell of rare quality. He finished with 5 for 62, his sixth five-wicket haul in just 20 Tests and his first in nearly five years. His name will be added to the Lord’s honours board. England’s batting, in contrast, resembled a collective over-correction – Ben Stokes had spoken before the match about playing “smarter cricket” after a 4-1 Ashes thrashing over the winter, and the effect seemed to be that the entire order second-guessed every instinct. Only Harry Brook, who hit 56 from 71 balls with the kind of counterattacking certainty no one else managed, played like himself. Nathan Smith claimed three more wickets; Will O’Rourke, operating at pace well above his averages, removed Joe Root.
What happened in the gathering evening sunshine, once Jamieson had walked off acknowledged as the day’s first hero, was harder to explain and harder to stop watching.
Robinson came on for England’s opening over. His last Test delivery had been for a different England, in February 2024 against India in Rajkot. The intervening 28 months had involved a stint playing grade cricket in Sydney to fall back in love with the game, appointment as Sussex’s red-ball captain and a county season of unambiguous quality – enough to force his way back into a selection conversation that England’s new-ball vacancy had been making increasingly urgent since Stuart Broad and James Anderson retired.
The first ball to Devon Conway jagged back off the surface and struck him on the pad. The umpire’s finger went up. Conway reviewed, hoping the ball had gone too far down leg, but it was clipping the stump and he had to go for two. One ball later, Kane Williamson pushed with soft hands at a delivery that nipped back and lobbed off the inside edge to Emilio Gay at short leg – Robinson was wheeling into his airplane celebration before the ball had landed, the catch so easy that anticipation beat execution. One ball after that, Rachin Ravindra was thumped in front playing too late to a delivery that held its line. He reviewed. Umpire’s call. Out.
Six balls, three wickets, no runs. In 28 months, Robinson had missed 24 Tests. In six balls, he appeared to have made all of them irrelevant.
“I was just trying to wobble it today and hit that fuller length,” Robinson told Sky Sports at stumps. “The pitch is reacting better when you try and wobble the ball. The swing seems to be sort of dying a little bit. To be honest, I was just trying to wobble it either way, up and down the slope, and I think it’s just one of those days. It was my day, and the decision got given as well – two umpire’s call, which sometimes they don’t go your way.”
Robinson added a fourth wicket when Daryl Mitchell became another victim of the growing wobble-seam movement, finishing with 4 for 10 from six overs. The only counter-resistance in the New Zealand innings came from Glenn Phillips, who batted with unfussy purpose to reach 31 not out when bad light ended play after 19.2 overs. Nathan Smith is his overnight partner on 6. Together they trail England by 79 runs.
Whether Phillips has the company he needs on day two is the question the match will turn on. New Zealand lost four wickets for six runs at one point, a collapse that rendered Jamieson’s earlier excellence almost a footnote. Their top six – Latham, Conway, Ravindra, Mitchell, Williamson and Blundell – departed for a combined total of 17 runs between them. Three England bowlers shared the damage: Robinson with four, Gus Atkinson with one and Josh Tongue with one. That England managed it with only 140 to defend is a kind of minor miracle of seamers over circumstances, as a rethought England attack searches for its post-Ashes identity.
There is also a larger story embedded in the individual ones. This is England’s first home Test since the Ashes surrender, the one Stokes called a catalyst for a structural rethink. Jamieson’s return suggested the opponents have not been idle either: the big New Zealander’s performance was built over 847 days of patient rehabilitation from the bottom of what he described as “red-ball Everest.” The collision of two bowlers reclaiming their Test identities on the same day, at the same ground, gave the day a shape no script would have dared write. Sky Sports called it a breathless return to the international summer, and that description undersells the occasion.
What the match produces from here is genuinely open. Robinson and Jamieson are both in form and both capable of repeating what they showed on Thursday. England will bat again. Whether 140 proves a competitive total depends almost entirely on what happens in the next session, when the pitch – by all accounts – may have flattened slightly. Nothing about Thursday guaranteed a result, and the gap between the sides is small enough that a single session could close it entirely. The three-Test series continues with the second Test at The Oval on June 17, and then a packed touring schedule awaits both sides deep into the WTC cycle. For now, though, Lord’s is holding its breath, and Robinson has given it reason to.
