One constant menace and post-Bazball malaise: England’s winners and losers | Simon Burnton

Up: Ollie RobinsonRobinson started the first Test by taking three wickets in an over, started his final bowling innings by taking two in an over, and between showed extraordinary control and consistency. His skill has never been in doubt but his fitness and work ethic were, so much so that he made only one appearance in just under three years before the comeback this summer.“I was nowhere near ready to play or anywhere near where I am now as a person, as a cricketer,” the 32-year-old said eight months ago. Further tests await, particularly outside England, but add a 47-ball half-century at Edgbaston and you’ve got a near-perfect few months.Down: Joe RootThanks to his unbeaten half-century in the final run chase at Edgbaston, this has not been Root’s worst home summer with the bat. But with a high score of 77 and an average of 33.5, it has also been way below his previous average in home Tests of 55.52. He has posted worse figures only once. Root has also been dismissed lbw eight times in 11 innings (73% of his dismissals), something that previously happened 19 times in 147 innings (13%), as he was repeatedly flummoxed by the proximity of wicketkeepers.There is fun to be had from watching a wonderful player working on a fresh puzzle – “I always think that’s the fun bit of it,” he says – but so far he has not found a solution. Meanwhile, he is captain once again, and while that has gone well enough so far, there were moments, against New Zealand at the Oval and Pakistan at Edgbaston, when England’s tactics looked at best uninspired.A 3-0 series win over Pakistan was welcome for captain Joe Root but he was not at his best. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PAUp: Dan LawrenceAt 29, Lawrence’s international career had been peculiar, staccato and unsatisfactory; a player of obvious ability apparently doomed to forever swirl around the batting order when in the team, and more often than not languish out of it. But a shift in form and focus since his move to Surrey in 2024 – hugely increasing his bowling workload, while sustaining first-class batting averages above 50 – made Lawrence England’s choice for a batting all-rounder after Ben Stokes’s retirement.Three 50s in four attempts at No 6 and a Test average this summer of 46.75 demonstrate that he has looked, at last, at home. That does not mean his place is secure: a new coach is incoming, Jordan Cox is excelling at No 3 and Jacob Bethell is on his way back from injury, while Root’s extremely limited use of Lawrence’s bowling on a turning pitch as Pakistan’s tail punished England’s seamers at Edgbaston suggests the captain has limited faith in his off-spin.Down: Gus AtkinsonOver the three games against Pakistan, England’s four-man seam attack established themselves as a unit of genuine menace in home conditions, taking 56 out of 60 wickets across the series. Atkinson, thanks to a three-fer in the tourists’ last innings of the series, got four of them.“He’s been really unlucky and we’ve said that to him as well,” said Josh Tongue. Atkinson has certainly contributed to his teammates’ superlative returns, but his own still look lilliputian in contrast to, say, Robinson’s 21 or Tongue’s 19. He did take 10 wickets in two games against New Zealand, but his most significant impact on that series came from going clubbing with Stokes.Up: Josh TongueWhat a year (and a couple of weeks) this has been for Tongue. Towards the end of 2025 he was in New Zealand with the white-ball squad, not as an active participant but just to work on his fitness before an Ashes series he would start as a backup, harbouring dreams of playing across all formats while actually having nailed down a place for none.Two games into an unravelling Ashes series, he was in, since when he has played two out of three ODIs, four out of five T20s, every Test match, taken 51 wickets across all formats and 43 in Tests, burnished his white-ball credentials by being the (joint) leading wicket-taker in the Hundred, been a constant menace to opposition batters and a mortal enemy to the top of off-stump. It has, as he put it during the second Test against Pakistan, “been crazy, really”.Down: Ben DuckettWhile there has been much discussion about Emilio Gay’s future as he feels his way into Test cricket, there has been little about England’s senior opener. But for all that he finishes it at No 3 in the scoring charts, this has been the poorest of Duckett’s four summers in the England team, only exceeding 36 runs once in 10 innings – the century against New Zealand at Trent Bridge, his home ground – while against Pakistan he batted four times, never reached 20 and averaged 8.80, his series ending with a first-baller on the fourth day at Edgbaston.The man who in many ways best embodied the Bazball spirit, the Test opener who never left the ball, has seemed becalmed in the uncertainty of a period between coaches. Beyond the batting, his catching at slip has been highly peccable.