No other regime would have kept faith with such maverick talents
Zak Crawley’s riposte to armchair critics was a century so brilliant even the Australians shook his hand, writes Oliver Brown, Chief Sports Writer
Zak Crawley could not help but grin at the fashion in which he brought up his first Ashes century. Setting himself to flay a tempter from Pat Cummins, he made ragged contact by his liquid standards, but still found the space at cover to snaffle the two all-important runs. It was an apt expression of a quite astonishing innings here in Manchester, with his hundred anything but chanceless and yet packed with more luscious brushstrokes than a Lowry painting.
He did not so much run towards the danger, to borrow the famous Bazball credo, as sprint towards it with his bat triumphantly raised. Crawley is a confounding cricketer, who scored 267 in only his eighth Test match but whose inconsistency has become so chronic that this glorious, freewheeling century only just nudged his average back above 30. It was a performance to illustrate why, for all the mutterings about his multiple failures to convert starts into telling scores, England’s belief in his value as an opener has seldom wavered.
The intensity of the scrutiny could have inflicted grave psychological damage on a more delicate soul. “Frenetic,” said Alastair Cook, after this year’s tour of New Zealand, where Crawley managed a dismal 58 runs in total. “Not quite sure of his game,” said David Gower. And that was just the former captains. His tormentors in the Twittersphere, exasperated by how often he would edge deliveries, joked that they could tell Crawley a joke but that “he would only go and nick it”.
Fortunately, Crawley was not inclined to offer any withering retort, adopting at 25 an admirably dismissive attitude to social media. “Being off there helps me get away from the average Joe and what they say, which, of course, I don’t care about anyway,” he said this summer. Screening out the noise is a shrewd move by his record in the 3½ Ashes Tests so far, with this magisterial Old Trafford knock vaulting him past Ben Stokes as England’s leading series run-scorer. If supporters do not take him to their hearts now, they never will.
Throughout a blistering afternoon session, the average Joe embraced his appeal. “He’s taller than the floodlights, Zak Crawley,” the Barmies chanted of the day’s 6ft 5in superstar as he launched a blizzard of drives, whips and slog-sweeps with that effortlessly cultivated technique. He certainly appeared giant in stature to the Australian quicks by the time he hit back-to-back fours off Pat Cummins to reach his 150.
Crawley has retained selectors’ patience far beyond what any other England openers would have a right to expect. Indeed, Brendon Mccullum has regarded his spates of poor scores essentially as an acceptable trade-off in dealing with such an extravagant talent. “I look at a guy like Zak and his skill set is not to be a consistent cricketer,” the head coach argued last summer. “He’s not that type of player. He has a game which, when he gets going, he can win matches for England.”
Quite the clairvoyant, our Brendon. For this was a day when Crawley responded to his admirers’ prophecies in stunning style, patiently adapting to the circumstances and then pressing the accelerator to devastating effect. He scored 20 runs off his first 30 balls, 22 off the second 30, and 55 off his third. To watch him in full flow, offering no respect to the reputations of the Australian attack, was to wonder at the quantum leap England have made since the last Ashes tour, when hapless openers Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed were such sitting ducks that they would often force poor Joe Root to the middle inside the first hour of play.
Mccullum clearly knows how to handle Crawley, too, often seeking him out after a low score to offer him a restorative cigar. “Go out and be the best version of yourself,” he would advise. The message was one that Crawley, understanding how his worst failings tended to materialise when he put excessive pressure on himself, absorbed easily. By removing the expectation, he has created the platform to prosper.
It is reasonable to suggest that Crawley would never have been granted the same latitude by previous regimes, such was their obsession with data. But in his case, the prioritising of impact over raw numbers has been astute. Crawley, in this mood, demonstrates the wisdom of standing by a player unafraid to play his shots.
Mccullum was a brilliantly belligerent batsman in his prime and he has instructed Crawley to play in the same vein. Gone is the oldschool philosophy that an opener’s primary attribute should be an aura of calm, in order to withstand periods of sustained ferocity with the new ball in difficult conditions. And in its place is a licence to go pedal to the metal and see what happens.
The outcome is often unpredictable. But the spectacle, as Crawley showed in unleashing shots of such pedigree that the Australians were lining up to shake his hand at the end, is truly breathtaking to behold.