Pace. Pace. And more pace.
For years there has been an emphasis on getting the ball down the other end as quickly as possible. In England it almost turned into an obsession.
When he took over the reins of the England side, Rob Key, the ECB’s justifiably maligned head of English cricket, made it clear that county bowlers operating at 75mph had no place in the modern game.
That, though – in keeping with most of his other recent decisions – looks increasingly misguided.
Mohammad Abbas and Ollie Robinson are never going to pose a threat to the life of a batter. But both have proved this summer that there’s a lot more to bowling than simply wanging it down the 22-yard strip at 90mph.
Wicketkeeper Jamie Smith has been standing up to Robinson’s 75mph bowling (Photo: AP)Robinson and Abbas are masters of their craft. And in many ways reviving the art of medium pace bowling. Outwitting batters without scaring the living daylights out of them.
Hardly surprising that Vernon Philander – who took 224 Test wickets for South Africa and played alongside Robinson at Sussex in 2017 – is more than happy to see this particular revival.
“I’ve spoken to Ollie at length about his control,” he tells The i Paper.
“If you’re bowling at that sort of speed your margin for error becomes a lot smaller than for guys getting it up into the high 80s, early 90s, so you have to be extremely disciplined.
“There will always be a place for skilful bowlers. Bowling isn’t exclusively about pace.
“It helps clearly, particularly in countries like Australia and South Africa but in England, you need variety.
Dot. Dot. Wicket. Dot. Wicket. Wicket.Every ball from that ridiculous Ollie Robinson over pic.twitter.com/A5jhEgkV1p
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 4, 2026“I’d want guys at 85mph plus, but I’d also tell you I want two of my seamers around 75mph or in the early 80s, because we know in the UK, if conditions are really good, you don’t mind the ball coming onto the bat because you can score and move the game forward.
“I think the big push for bowlers at 85 into the high 80s, early 90s, is probably more applicable when you play in Africa or Australia, that’s when you need out-and-out pace to really make life difficult for batters.
“But in the UK, there’s always going to be the odd day where the overhead conditions are in your favour, and bowlers at 80mph to become an absolute nightmare because there’s no pace to work with as a batter.
“As we’ve seen this summer, when the ball’s moving about, the pressure on the batters is huge.”
Philander was a tearaway pace bowler in his younger days, as was Jimmy Anderson. In both cases, as their pace dropped, they became two of world cricket’s most dangerous operators.
Philander made a virtue of bowling seam at under 80 miles per hour (Photo: Getty)Robinson and Abbas are similarly lethal, particularly under English skies.
“The conditions here negate pace,” Philander adds.
“You might get the odd really bouncy, fast track at the Oval or Trent Bridge, but generally, particularly in county cricket, pace is largely irrelevant, and if you can nip it around we’ve seen that batters struggle.
“The techniques we see now mean that a lot of players, even at Test level, struggle to adapt when the ball is moving.
“A lot of people get it mixed up when you say bowling at the stumps, because if you’re bowling gun-barrel straight at the stumps these days the batters are good enough to score off you.
“But if you have a skill like Robinson has, where he plays around with the crease quite beautifully, getting the ball to go away, that’s his natural set, and then the one that comes back every now and again is the one that raises question marks over a batter’s technique.”
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Chris Stocks: This man has shown England how to bat properly Saj Sadiq: I’ve watched Pakistan all my life – this team is a laughing stockRobinson is continuing a proud tradition of English seamers.
It’s worth remembering that the likes of Harold Larwood, Devon Malcolm and Mark Wood remain the exception rather than the norm, even if English cricket is now producing far more high octane pace bowlers than ever before.
Rob Key once said.: “This 75mph, keeper up, dobbing it on a length – we know that doesn’t work in Test cricket, wherever you are. It’s been proven all around the world.”
It’s not the first call that he has got entirely wrong.
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