England’s Ashes summer has started on the right note. Zak Crawley, in making 91 for Kent against Northamptonshire off 171 balls, looked as compact and controlled as he has ever done.
The season’s opener is no time for Bazball, whatever that may be. Crawley, instead, played the conditions of a slow pitch and wobbling ball perfectly, and gave an appreciative audience of around 1,000 spectators at the Spitfire Ground the impression that he might enjoy an Ashes series which defines his career.
“There was all summer in a stroke played by Frank Woolley,” it was said of Kent’s greatest stylist. In this Crawley innings there were hints of spring: signs that his game is coming together at the age of 25, after years of having to learn on the England job.
“I was just trying to play every ball on its merits and they bowled really well, they didn’t give us much to score from. As I got in I tried to push on and score a bit more quickly. Sometimes when it’s doing more you’ve got to score quicker, you’ve got to put them under pressure a bit more. That’s what we’re trying to do at England, that’s the style that England want to play so they want to see people in county cricket who can play the same way.
“I think I naturally score quite quickly, that’s my natural game. I think it’s something I’ve got carried away with in recent times. I scored quickly after I had that period of slowness at the beginning, from 20 to 90 I must have been at a 75 strike rate I reckon, so I’ve just got to bide my time a bit more. There was a nice turn-out today and it’s always good to score runs for Kent.”
After Kent had taken Northamptonshire’s three remaining wickets for a total of 117, a younger, rasher Crawley might have fretted and tried to run – down the pitch – before he could walk. Instead, like an old-fashioned opener, he played himself in: Gareth Berg, a line-and-lengther, bowled a maiden over to Crawley, who took a single off his 10th ball to get off the mark.
Yet there were still flashes of the new way, or rather of Ben-ball, because it was Ben Stokes who announced his mission statement before Brendon McCullum was even interviewed for the England head coach’s job.
Two of these flashes were shots off Berg, drives over mid-on when the ball was new, one from down the pitch. He gave Jack White similar treatment, this time through midwicket.
These shots told the bowlers who was boss, that Crawley was simply biding his time, that the pressure would soon devolve on the bowling side. It made a good, sensible, combination of ancient and modern method, as Crawley took 44 balls over his first nine runs before upping the gears.
And of course, as soon as Northants brought on their spinner Rob Keogh, Crawley reverse-swept his first ball for four, and conventionally swept another four soon afterwards, and used his feet until the off-spinner was withdrawn. Northants had won the championship match at Canterbury last summer by means of their spinners so it was a point that had to be made.
Overall, Crawley left the ball well early on; his balance was good, even when he was batting at the Nackington end, where the slope lures the batsman’s head down the hill; and his stance was more orthodox than it had been by the end of last winter, when in the Wellington Test he had taken guard on or outside off stump and did not seem to know where it was.
With wickets falling regularly at the other end to the dogged visiting seamers, Crawley never had the platform to go on all-out attack. But having reached 32 off 100 balls (his Test strike rate is 58), he accelerated until he picked a ball too much on off stump to flick leg side and a leading edge gave extra cover a simple catch.
Crawley is worth backing by England’s management provided he backs his own game and does not tinker mid-series as he did in New Zealand; and if he backs himself as a second slip and takes his catches there, making his game more than one-dimensional. This innings should reassure him, after he scored a scintillating 122 off 111 balls in the Rawalpindi Test last December, enabling England to win with a handful of minutes to spare, but no other 50 in the next four Tests.
When he does have his day, Crawley makes batting so much easier for those who follow, by deterring the opening bowlers from pitching the new ball up. In almost every series he seems to have one such day, not only last December in Pakistan. His 77 against Australia in Sydney took some wind out of their sails. His 53 against India, on what became a Bunsen in Ahmedabad, featured 10 fours, some of them sublime cover drives.
What bolder statement could England make on the first day of the forthcoming Ashes than Crawley crashing Pat Cummins through the covers when he pitches up, and Ben Duckett pulling or cutting whenever Australia’s captain pitches short? Every seat-belt in the ground, including the England dressing-room, will have to be fastened.
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