Australia have been the victims of inspired assaults before, but never like this
Crawley joins illustrious list with his ransacking innings as England opener metes out fast and furious punishment
Too tall for a cavalry officer perhaps, but there was no doubting the skill as he raised his sword and charged
Never have England’s batsmen given Australia’s bowlers both barrels as Zak Crawley did, firstly in his stand with Moeen Ali then with Joe Root, on the second day of the fourth Test. By the end of it the Australians looked shot, or at least visibly wounded, as the stress of playing their fifth Test since mid-june caught up with them.
Australia is renowned as the home of marsupials, Aussie rules and the Big Bash. But in the fourth Test they have discovered that England are now producing some even bigger bashers.
In Ashes series of the past it had been known for an England batsman to summon a superlative century, maybe in victory or maybe in defeat. But never has such fast and furious punishment been meted out to an Australian side as it was on this pivotal day in the series, which had been poised on a knife-edge throughout until England launched this unprecedented, collective offensive.
When Gilbert Jessop scored the fastest of all Test hundreds for England off 76 balls, he had a couple of calm Yorkshiremen for steady company, not big hitters, to see England home in 1902. When Bob Barber hit 185 in Sydney in 1965-66, Geoffrey Boycott hung in but he did not compete with his partner stroke for stroke.
At this same venue, Old Trafford, in 1981, Ian Botham hooked Dennis Lillee’s bouncers into what was then called Warwick Road station. Curiously enough, even though the square has been reorientated since then,
Pat Cummins deployed Australian fielders in exactly the same topographical positions, but on this occasion it was for Crawley’s slashing drives behind point, especially when Mitchell Starc bowled short and wide.
England’s supporters, then and now, were exhilarated by the spectacle of Australia’s fast bowlers being put to the sword; and by the prospect of England winning an Ashes series, then and now. Back in 1981, however, Botham’s partner Chris Tavare did not reverse-scoop like Root, or flow into felicitous cover-drives like Moeen.
In 2005, on the last afternoon at the Oval, Kevin Pietersen had
Ashley Giles for support. In 2019 at Headingley, Ben Stokes had Jack Leach. But these partners were “seconds”, as in a duel, whereas Moeen and Root almost matched Crawley stroke for stroke.
The closest parallel would be the opening day of the Oval Test in 1985 when Graham Gooch and David Gower weighed into a beleaguered Australia “attack”, but it was a different game, long before the advent of Twenty20 and reverse-scooping. The numbers then are familiar to us – Gooch scoring 196 and Gower 157 – but scoring rates were much more leisurely, and occasionally there were hiding places for Australia’s bowlers and fielders. Even the odd maiden over was delivered.
In that Oval Test, Gooch scored his runs at the rate of 63 per 100 balls, Gower at 72. On this occasion at Old Trafford, Australia’s over-rate was vastly slower, in the manner of our times. Nevertheless, Crawley ransacked at a scoring rate of 103 runs per 100 balls, Root at 88 and Moeen – who did have a new ball to see off, following the early departure of Ben Duckett – at 65.
It was, therefore, in England’s Ashes annals, a unique assault led by Crawley. Too tall for a cavalry officer perhaps, but there was no doubting the skill as he raised his sword and charged. Before lunch he repelled the new ball. Afterwards he propelled it.
Crawley raced to a hundred in the afternoon session alone. Milestones whizzed by, Moeen’s 3,000 Test runs, Crawley’s 2,000. The Australians were one-paced, spinnerless, while England’s batting – liberated from generations of over-cautious coaching – was filled with a spirit of adventure as never before, except in this era of Stokes and Brendon Mccullum.
Only five batsmen had ever rattled up a hundred in a single session for England as Crawley did, and two of those hardly counted. In 1921 at the Oval, when Australia had effectively won the Ashes 3-0 because the last Test was doomed to be a draw in the three days that were allotted, Phil Mead of Hampshire and Jack Russell of Essex filled their boots, while Australia’s captain Warwick Armstrong was so bored that he read a newspaper that blew on to the field.
That leaves Jessop’s still-unsurpassed hundred, and Botham’s unbeaten 149 at Headingley in 1981, and Stokes’s rampage on the same ground in 2019, as the bona fide centuries in a session for England. It is some company that Crawley now keeps.