Axe does not mean end for Lawrence
Rookie batsman is likely to be dropped after harshest of reality checks in India but he has rare talent to build a fine Test career
Late on the third evening in Chennai, with England’s fate of emphatic defeat long ago sealed, Dan Lawrence provided a wonderful moment of resistance.
Faced with Ravichandran Ashwin, the master in his lair, Lawrence advanced down the track and launched a straight six: a stroke conceived, and executed, with brilliant clarity. It was just a fleeting, futile act of defiance, but it spoke of a rich talent, emphasising the impression Lawrence had made in his sparkling 73 and 21 not out on Test debut in Sri Lanka.
It is less than a month since Lawrence oversaw England’s victory in their first winter Test. The brutality of Test cricket is such that these four weeks must already feel like an age: enough time for the quirks of Lawrence’s technique to go from lauded to lambasted, and for the numbing reality of a sequence of 58 runs in six innings.
Lawrence secured his Test selection as a two-time County Championship winner – with one Bob Willis Trophy thrown in for good measure – at the age of 23, with a reputation as an individualistic talent and particularly adroit player of spin. This perception was merited: for Essex in first-class cricket, his average of 34.6 against pace swells to 60.3 against spin.
During a torrid past month in Asia, Lawrence has become the latest to learn that pedigree against spin in county cricket gives no guarantee of success against it at Test level. Different approaches – from the first-innings passivity here, when he laboured for 52 balls over nine runs, to his more proactive second-innings method – have been stymied by the excellence of first Lasith Embuldeniya and then Ashwin.
In between, during the first Test in Chennai, Lawrence was twice dismissed cheaply by reverse-swing bowling of a quality seldom glimpsed in the county game.
Lawrence’s difficulties do not mean that his selection was undeserving; they merely highlight that the challenge of batting in Test cricket in Asia is of an altogether different order to that in the County Championship. And so for all the rightful fretting that county pitches do not give enough spinners enough overs, Lawrence – like Zak Crawley in Sri Lanka – has been the latest example of how the paucity of spin bowled in England impedes the development of batsmen, too.
The 23 per cent of overs in firstclass cricket that spinners bowled in England since 2015 is the lowest figure of any nation.
The moment that halted Lawrence’s second innings on 26 was particularly instructive. Ashwin, returning to the attack, exchanged a few words with wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, concocting their plot.
Sensing that Lawrence might want to repeat his six the previous evening, Ashwin fired the ball down the leg side, nutmegging the charging batsman before Pant completed a brilliant stumping.
With hindsight, it was an impetuous shot. Yet in this match Lawrence was exposed to Test cricket with the difficulty set to extreme: batting in an unfamiliar position at No3, facing a cocktail of India’s weight of runs, a biting track, Ashwin’s imperiousness, men prowling around the bat, and a delirious home crowd.
In some ways, Lawrence can feel a little aggrieved. Batting at three is highly specialised; he has not batted there in a first-class game for Essex since 2017. After playing at five in Sri Lanka. Lawrence could be forgiven for asking whether any of the three senior batsmen below him – Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Ollie Pope, now in his 15th Test – could have shuffled up in India instead.
The contrast between England’s reluctance to rush Pope up the order again – since his recall in 2019, he has never batted higher than five – and how Lawrence was expected to cope with unfamiliar demands does not seem entirely consistent. If there have still been glimpses of a singular talent, the demands on Lawrence have felt a little too much, too soon.
Lawrence’s probable imminent dropping may prove nothing more than the end of the first brief act of his international career; the prelude to more fulfilling acts that lie ahead. And as he walked off, the latest batsman to be scuppered by Ashwin and his beguiling box of tricks, he could find solace in the knowledge that so many of Test batting’s greatest names – including Ken Barrington, Graham Gooch and Root from England alone – were also dropped early in their journeys. Like them, you sense Lawrence will return.