Adam Collins discovers that England’s ‘forgotten’ opener is ready to try a spot of queue jumping
Sam Robson wintered well. It would have been understandable had he not after the story of his 2016 boiled down to a prized opportunity left untaken.
In the opening stanza of that season, the Middlesex opener couldn’t have done much more to earn an England recall. His account opened with 231 at Lord’s against Warwickshire, then another ton came in defiance of a full-strength Notts attack, before falling for 99 in their Somerset home fixture. He was flying.
With Alex Hales’ primacy as Alastair Cook’s Test partner never consolidated, and Robson’s county team-mate Nick Compton overwhelmed at No.3, the stars nearly aligned. But they didn’t. Selectors – then at least – stayed the course with the former and rejigged the middle order to replace the latter.
Robson’s season stalled before injury blunted it further. Then it spluttered out.
His final 12 Championship innings netted collectively only ten runs more than his first in April, averaging 20 through that period. His side’s triumph at Lord’s was profound, but Robson bagged himself a pair in the decider against Yorkshire.
When England’s touring squads were considered he had been overtaken by Ben Duckett, then Haseeb Hameed, and, finally, Keaton Jennings.
No one understands Robson’s predicament better than the man himself, who reflected on it with The Cricket Paper on the cusp of his 2017 campaign.
While Haseeb and Jennings carved out their way in India, Robson – whose accent, try as it might, remains Australian – did as he had before winning seven England caps in the summer of 2014, by returning to Sydney grade cricket. Four months brought 792 runs at a league-high average of 88.
And, perhaps just as importantly, he had fun. “It was good for my life, good for my lifestyle and my cricket,” Robson says. “You have got to play well to do well, you can’t just turn up because they are out to get you. The standard is high. But, just playing once a week means that leading into a season now I still feel like I am refreshed.”
At 27, Robson is no longer the kid from afar talked up at every turn.
But coupling belief and awareness, he understands how quickly recent setbacks can morph into redemption. “It does a little bit (frustrate), but I think that’s just the nature of the beast,” he says. “But I know what it takes to get in. And that’s scoring bucket loads of runs; bucket loads of runs at the right time. That’s what got me my chance.”
Robson doesn’t feel automatically entitled to an opportunity to resume an England career that brought a century at the second time of asking before sliding out of the XI by the end of that summer.
Nor does he feel sorry for himself or buy into the narrative that he was yet another piece of collateral damage in the impatient hunt to find a permanent companion for Cook.
He gets that it is a fickle game where timing, in more ways than one, is everything.
“I do feel I’m further back in the pecking order, but I’m also aware you need to put things together at the right time,” he says. “I’d love to play for England again but my priority is just to try to play as well as I can for Middlesex. It is a bit of a cliché but I think that will hold me in good stead down the line – if the timing is right.”
Robson draws strength from a belief that his game has never been better, and considerably so since the stint playing for his adopted country. “The thing that has kept me going and kept me ticking over has been trying to improve,” he explains. “I haven’t played Test cricket since then, but I’ve kept improving since.”
With that at the front of his mind, Robson doesn’t need constant reinforcement from powers-that-be or selectors. “Being involved all those years I am in the loop,” he says. “But where I am now I’m young but not 19, so to get yourself in the hunt and be getting discussed you need big scores. If you are not scoring well enough, you are not going to be discussed. And that’s the way it should be.”
Inspiration is also taken from close friend and former opening partner Chris Rogers, and current Middlesex teammate Adam Voges, two who took until 35 to establish themselves as first-choice internationals.
Naturally, he doesn’t want to wait that long, but understands the importance of patience; of not burning out trying to control what he can’t. “It just is biding my time. Looking at Buck and his long career, I’d like to keep performing and doing well year after year after year. I’d love to play for as long as I can.”
Implicit within those words, too, is that England – the country he has lived in since school – is home for good. “My focus now is trying to do as well as I can in England and (returning to Australia) is not something in my mind anymore.”
That alone sets up a tantalising prospect if he can one day force his way into an Ashes battle.
Perversely, given that it took such a short time for him to go from front of mind to well back in the queue also means he could just as quickly return to where he began. By this November, even? Is that dream alive?
“Definitely,” Robson says. “Keaton Jennings has done so brilliantly in the last 12 months and it just shows if you improve and you take your game to a new level and you perform and have a big year, you can bang the door down.”
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, April 7 2017
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