Ollie Robinson has vowed to get “under the skins” of the Australia batsmen and believes he may have found out a way to solve the puzzle of how to bowl at Steve Smith.

Robinson is in line to play all five Tests of his first Ashes tour after emerging as the find of the summer for England and was even name checked by Justin Langer, the Australia coach, on Saturday who described him as a “real handful.”

In his brief England career so far Robinson has proved to be a spiky competitor on the field and regardless of his lack of experience at Test level is promising to not take a step back if things become heated out in the middle.

“I don’t think me as a person could keep my head down if I tried. I’m definitely going to be trying to get under the skins and try and sort of unsettle them as it were, batters and bowlers really,” he said. “If I can get them off their rhythm then then we’re winning, so it’s something you’ll definitely see and hopefully we will come out on top.”

Robinson impressed England with his deep thinking about bowling last summer, learning quickly from watching James Anderson about how to bowl cross-seam deliveries and also showed he can hit a consistent length and move the ball both ways.

As you would expect, he has been studying footage of Smith and believes he has worked out a way to bowl at him and possibly find the weakness in his batting. England will need all the insight they can muster given Smith’s Ashes record. He established his dominance in the last series with a 141 in the first Test at the Gabba and has ground England down ever since.

“I suppose he is different. I’ve just been watching videos really of how he’s got out and in what manner in the lead up to how he’s got out,” he said. “He plays a lot of balls from deep in his crease, his contact points are a lot deeper than other batters. So my lengths might have to be slightly different to him. 

“If you start to starve him of his scoring areas, he seems to want to score. He’s not someone that will just sit there and block all day. So I think for me, in my discipline, I just have to starve him of scoring and hopefully he’ll make the mistake, or if the ball is moving hopefully I can get him lbw or nick off.  Obviously out here it’s a bit harder with the ball not moving as much but I’ve looked at him and Labuschagne quite in depth and hopefully got a plan for both of them.”

England’s attack have been heartened by the wet weather which gives them hope the Gabba pitch might assist seam and swing more than usual as the groundstaff run out of time to roll the life out of it before the first Test starts on Wednesday.

“The wickets have been a bit softer and there’s been a bit more grass because of the conditions. We have toyed around with a lot of seam angles and tried to work out what’s working best as a bowling group so hopefully when it comes to the first Test we can get the ball nipping and swinging early,” said Robinson.

‘All I’ve been doing since summer is making sure I better myself as a person’

By Nick Hoult

There will be a swirl of emotions for Ollie Robinson when the national anthems are played and he begins his first Ashes Test at the Gabba this week.

Firstly he will be fulfilling a boyhood dream from when he was taken to the ground as a 13-year-old to watch Andrew Flintoff’s side start an Ashes campaign that ended in a whitewash, and secondly it will be the culmination of an unforgettable year in his life when he became an England regular but thought his career was over before it had barely begun when racist messages he sent years earlier became public.

Robinson became one of the year’s unlikeliest emblems for the culture wars when historic tweets he wrote in 2013 emerged on his England Test debut against New Zealand at Lord’s, just hours after he along with the rest of the team lined up at Lord’s wearing T-shirts bearing anti-discrimination messages. 

There were those he thought he should be excused teenage indiscretion and not be punished years later including the Prime Minister and other leading politicians, while others pointed to it as an example of the dark shadow of racism haunting English cricket.

For Robinson, the fall out left him worrying for his future as an international player but he showed immense mental strength to put it behind him and bounce back against India, and ended his first Tet summer with 28 wickets at 19.60, earning the respect of his team-mates in the process.

“To get here and hopefully play the first Test is going to be huge for me and a massive achievement and something that I’ll never forget,” he said. “So hopefully, I’ll play the first Test and do well. I didn’t think at one stage I was going to be playing for England again so it’s been quite a rollercoaster over the last six to eight months and to be here and be with the team, it’s quite an emotional time for me.”

Robinson was sent on diversity awareness training courses as part of his punishment for the tweets, an educational programme that will now be rolled out to all involved in professional cricket following the changes implemented by the England & Wales Cricket Board as part of its reaction to the Azeem Rafiq scandal. The England team will be expected to set the example to fellow professionals and take a lead in the anti-discrimination drive.

“I think since the situation in the summer I’ve learned a lot and worked on myself as a person a lot. Not done a massive amount with the group but I know every single lad in this group is trying to better themselves as a person and learn on the job as it were,” he said.

“We’re getting a lot of information about the things we should be doing and how we can better ourselves as people. And that’s all I’ve been trying to do since the summer really is making sure that I better myself as a person and make sure people that come after me don’t make the same mistakes I did.”