Australian batter gets a close-up of an impending Ashes threat
Paul Edwards04-May-2023If the first day of this game illustrated the exceptional talent of a cricketer who will probably be facing Australia at Edgbaston in 43 days’ time, it also reminded the 2000-plus crowd of the deep well of ability that exists in the county game. On an afternoon when the press box was crowded with correspondents, one or two of whose papers rarely note the existence of first-class domestic cricket, this is no trivial thing.Friday’s headline writers will no doubt identify Ollie Robinson’s bowling as the most notable feature of a fluctuating day and rightly so. The tall Sussex seamer took four wickets in his first six overs to reduce Worcestershire to 43 for 4, thereby justifying Cheteshwar Pujara’s decision to bowl first on a bright morning. That choice looked even wiser six balls later when Brett D’Oliveira had edged Fynn Hudson-Prentice to the safe hands of Tom Clark at third slip with only one more run added.But this Worcestershire team bat deep and on this increasingly cheerless day they countered to splendid effect, adding a total of 219 runs for the sixth, seventh and eighth wickets before Robinson returned to dismiss Matthew Waite, Joe Leach and Ben Gibbon in seven balls, thereby completing figures of 7 for 59 that did him nothing but justice. Waite made 59 before being bowled by a fine slower ball and Leach had helped him add 103 for the eighth wicket when he nicked Robinson to second slip, where the straightforward catch was taken by Steven Smith.Ah yes, Smith, I wondered when we would get to him. It was the Australian’s presence in the Sussex side that brought the nationals to New Road and which might have swelled the crowd a little. has a pleasing cinematic echo to it but we would have needed a director of Frank Capra’s talent to make much of a day on which one of the finest cricketers on the planet played football with his new team mates before play started, took a simple catch in Worcestershire’s innings of 264, and hadn’t batted when bad light caused play to be halted with Sussex neatly placed on 63 for 1.To their credit, neither the journalists nor, it seemed, the spectators were deterred when they heard that Pujara had called correctly and stuck Worcestershire in. The residents of Cherry Orchard, St Peter the Great and the city’s other southern suburbs did not hear the scream of brakes and sudden U-turns at around 10.35 this morning. Perhaps they knew that watching Robinson bowling would offer its own delights and, if so, their reading was something of a bullseye.Indeed, Robinson’s new-ball bowling was a perfect showcase of the talents that brought him to England’s notice. He presented the seam perfectly straight, bowled with his magnificently high action and achieved an accuracy that gave the batsmen no outlets, no relief. Ed Pollock slashed unwisely and was taken at slip; Azhar Ali was leg before to one that seamed in; Jack Haynes’ fourth ball nipped away and Haynes was good enough to nick it; and Jake Libby lost his middle stump when he played down the wrong line.”For myself, knowing my body now, I’ve just got to keep bowling,” said Robinson as he anticipated the Ashes. “We’ve got two more Sussex games after this and then the Ireland Test. I’ll try and play all of those, get in as many overs as possible and peak for the Ashes hopefully. It will be the biggest series of my career. You can see from last year how much the Sussex boys have come on. We are a young team anyway but they are all a year older and the batting and bowling look so much better.”Steven Smith was making his Sussex debut•Getty Images
As for Smith, he crouched down dutifully and barely touched the ball during the 28 overs of the morning session. He watched as Clark took two catches at third slip and Tom Alsop one at first; he joined in the celebrations that followed each of Robinson’s four wickets as keenly as he had participated in the pre-match kickabout. We can only wonder whether he considered the fact that in just over six weeks, he might be facing Robinson at Edgbaston, that bear-garden of Test grounds, in the first match of the Ashes series. Perhaps not. One understands that Smith’s powers of concentration are so formidable and his focus so narrow, that he only considers the task immediately before him. So it would be pleasant to think that he is intent on giving Sussex his best for three games. That would be a wise approach. The World Test Championship and the Ashes will come in their own time.Worcestershire, meanwhile, had begun to restore their innings when luncheon was taken and they continued in the same vein during the afternoon session. Their efforts were led at first by Adam Hose, whose maiden half-century on his home debut included nine fine fours before he was yorked by Henry Crocombe. But Hose was assisted by Gareth Roderick, who made 39 before he could do little with a lifter from Sean Hunt, and the blood-and-thunder highlight of the day for home spectators was the freedom with which Waite smacked three sixes and reached his fifty off just 40 balls before Robinson bamboozled him. Leach, never a man to shirk a counter-attack, chipped in with another fifty and the unexpected arrival of a bonus point was warmly greeted.Sussex’s reply was impressive, especially so on an increasingly drear evening on which they could have lost three or four wickets. Ali Orr, who is unbeaten on 33, appears a better player every time one sees him and D’Oliveira’s bowlers had to be satisfied with the wicket of Clark, who was caught behind for 12 when driving at Josh Tongue.Afterthought: read the famous notice outside a 19th century cricket ground. The differential acknowledges the Doctor’s dominance of the game in that era yet it also reflects a curiously wrong-headed attitude to the strivings, at once skilled, earthy and beyond prediction, that constitute a day at the cricket. The game has always been more than one player, even Bradman. Tomorrow, of course, we may indeed see the abundant talents of Mr Smith, although one can scarcely move at New Road this evening without meeting someone who tells you the weather forecast is ghastly.