It was, as ever with this England setup, a gentle dropping.

Ben Stokes couched the omission of Ollie Robinson with another round of praise for the seamer’s attitude, both before the tour of India and on it, adding that they had space for only two seamers in their Dharamsala XI, and they wanted Mark Wood’s “pace and firepower”. The fact that Robinson had a stomach bug was irrelevant; it is possible that had England played a third seamer – their plan on arrival in Dharamsala – it would have been the uncapped Gus Atkinson.

Barring a freak chain of events that sees Robinson recover from illness and others fall prey to the bug, he will leave India having played one match, bowled just 13 overs, suffered another back spasm, and seen his pace dip, edges fall short of the cordon, his front foot consistently overstep, all while dropping a crucial catch, and making his highest score for England. A mixed bag, to say the least. By the time the English season starts in four weeks, that will be the only cricket he has played in a year.

Stokes was never going to criticise Robinson. It is not his style to publicly condemn his players.

“Ollie is going to be more disappointed than anyone else,” Stokes said. “He went seven months without playing, missed the first three games, then got his opportunity and an uncontrollable thing happened. He was out on the field, he still bowled and he still tried. When someone is struggling with their body but still willing to put an effort in for the team when it is required, that’s all you can ask for.”

Suspicions off-field interests affecting his cricket

Behind the scenes, though, there has been a palpable frustration with Robinson, and not just because of the series of harmless but ham-fisted podcasts he has put out with his new partner, the influencer Mia Baker. She was the only partner on tour for the first four Tests (but has since left) and the pair were unsurprisingly inseparable, which did provide a contrast to an extremely tight-knit squad.

Stokes described the minor back twinge Robinson suffered as “uncontrollable”. These uncontrollable issues keep happening, though. It happened in Adelaide in 2021, Hobart in 2022, Headingley in 2023, and now Ranchi in 2024. Worst of all, back spasms kept him out of every Test in the Caribbean in 2022 when he had been entrusted with leading the attack after James Anderson and Stuart Broad were dropped.

England are effectively picking a four-man attack on this tour, with Joe Root and perhaps even Stokes chipping in with overs. Whether the injuries are his fault or not, could they really have selected Robinson here? Probably not, even if Stokes said otherwise.

This time, England may reflect that they should have ensured he played a warm-up match – he has benefited from lots of overs in the past – but also need their players to take responsibility. Robinson looked fit, and said he was fit, but broke down once more.

Fitness issues put England future in doubt

For everything that Stokes said, it is a passage in Broad’s recent autobiography about that Headingley Test that is more telling.

“I like Robbo, he’s got a lot of great attributes – a really high point of release that exaggerates the bounce he extracts, skills to move the balls both ways, and the discipline to rarely bowl loose stuff,” Broad wrote. “His accuracy means he is always at a batter.

“Unfortunately, though, his percentage of walking off the field is higher than you would want from an international performer.

“His fitness has improved since then [limping off in Hobart], because everyone does when it gets exposed to Test cricket. It’s a different type of fitness to that you require to play county cricket; matches are played at a completely different intensity. Only once you have played it, do you realise what you need from a physical perspective. He is a good bowler, a very good bowler, but needs to be 100 per cent to fulfil his undoubted potential.”

Broad is right. Robinson is immensely skilful, but needs to be as fit as he was in Pakistan in 2022 to maintain his outstanding Test record of 76 wickets at an average of 22.9.

His latest injury has come at a bad time. The end of this tour is a natural halfway point in this team’s four-year life cycle. Some refreshment to it is inevitable in the summer, when they face West Indies and Sri Lanka before going to Pakistan and New Zealand – not new challenges – in the winter. He could be one of those eased out for Bazball 2.0. Home specialist Chris Woakes will be back in the summer, while England will be desperate to hand opportunities to Atkinson, Josh Tongue and Matt Potts, who were all handed two-year contracts. Robinson got only a one-year deal.

For Robinson, there is only one answer: use this moment as a kick up the backside to get properly fit again, and take the bucket-load of wickets that he always does for Sussex (for whom he has 312 at 20.01) early in the summer, proving his hunger to be the bowler England know he can be.