The third round of County Championship action has provided plenty of cheer for England’s selectors, but little can have pleased them as much as Zak Crawley making 170 from just 183 balls, his highest first-class score for Kent.
Crawley is under pressure for his spot as England’s opener ahead of the first Test of the summer, against Ireland on June 1, not just because his Test average is 27.6, but because he has not proved a consistent runscorer for his county. And so it has proved at the start of this summer, with 91 in his first innings followed by three low scores.
Against Essex at Canterbury, he put that behind him, to play an innings studded with handsome strokes, reaching his hundred in 96 balls and helping ensure Kent did not follow-on in response to a score of 451 for five declared. The surface is good for batting (Nick Browne and Tom Westley both made big hundreds for the visitors), and Essex’s best bowler Sam Cook is absent with a hamstring issue, but this was an excellent knock of controlled aggression against a solid attack.
Crawley scored 27 fours and a six, with his boundaries coming all round the ground. But he was especially brutal whenever Essex’s seamers strayed onto his pads, while Simon Harmer was treated with little respect, especially with the reverse sweep.
That this was just Crawley’s eighth first-class hundred (three of them in Tests), and that he required this innings to take his average back above 30 in red-ball cricket goes a long way to explaining the questions around Crawley’s place ahead of the Ashes, especially with a selection logjam ahead of Jonny Bairstow’s return.
But this is the sort of innings the selectors want from Crawley: brisk, fluent and changing the complexion of the match. By the time he was dismissed in the 64th over, by one that nipped away from Jamie Porter, Kent were just 170 behind. No other Kent batsman reached 50 – his opening partner, Ben Compton, made 46 in a stand of 162 – as Crawley kept his side in the game. By stumps on day three, Kent were 109 behind with three wickets in hand.
There has been much besides to delight England’s selection team this weekend: Crawley’s opening partner this winter, Ben Duckett, made 177 for Nottinghamshire at Lord’s, with his team-mate Stuart Broad following up with four for 68. James Anderson also took five for 76 for Lancashire against Somerset, although Ollie Robinson has had a quiet match for Sussex against Yorkshire. At Hove, Yorkshire need just 63 more runs after a remarkable third-day turnaround that saw Sussex bowled out for 137.
Perhaps best of all, Jofra Archer returned to Mumbai Indians’ side in the Indian Premier League after a three-week absence with elbow soreness. Archer has not played a Test for more than two years due to elbow and back stress fractures, but remains in contention to play in the Ashes.
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