Crawley confronts the consequences of another winter of failed promise

It was only a few hours after Rob Key had vowed to end the “lack of consequence for poor performance” in the England set up that Zak Crawley walked out to bat for Kent in pre-season. And it was only a few minutes later that he was walking to the pavilion, smashed on the knee roll of his back pad by Surrey’s Matt Fisher for a six-ball duck.

It is manifestly unfair to read anything into a friendly in March, and Crawley’s first hit of the summer – in fact, it was barely even spring – will not affect his prospects of playing in England’s next Test against New Zealand in June. But when Crawley opens for Kent in the County Championship at Chester-le-Street next Friday, he will do so under rare pressure.

Crawley’s position as an England opener has been untouchable for the last four years: he has only missed three out of 46 Tests under Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes’ management, all due to injury. He rarely plays in the Championship and has never been under any pressure when doing so, knowing that his England place is secure regardless of his performance.

No longer, if Key is to be believed. “We’ve put a huge amount of value on loyalty and having a settled team, and giving players a good run,” he told the BBC on Monday. “The problem with that is, we’ve probably swung it too far, so then there’s a lack of consequence for poor performance… We need to be more ruthless in some of the selections that we’ve done.”

Key was alluding in part to Ollie Pope’s selection ahead of Jacob Bethell last year, but his comments – repeated across multiple interviews – felt like a direct challenge to Crawley. “No more getting to 60 or 70, chipping one up in the air and thinking that’s alright,” Key added, bringing Crawley’s plink to midwicket for a 57-ball 64 against India at The Oval to mind.

It is easily forgotten that only two years ago, Crawley had a genuine case to be England’s best-performing batter. He was their leading run-scorer in consecutive five-match series – against Australia at home, then India away – and was finally delivering on England’s long-held belief that he had the attributes to succeed against the best bowlers in the world.

But it proved a false dawn: he has scored a solitary century since, against Zimbabwe, and averaged a shade under 30 across England’s last 10 Tests. There were encouraging moments in the Ashes – a fluent 76 at the Gabba, a measured 85 in Adelaide – but after 64 Tests, he has still only scored five hundreds, and only two in England wins.

“If Zak plays 90 Test matches, I think he’ll average 31. I think, his first-class career, he’ll average 32,” Nasser Hussain said at the end of that series. “He has the same stats wherever he plays, whatever he does.” Alastair Cook was even more blunt on a recent Stick to Cricket podcast: “His big moment was that Ashes. ‘He’s going to win us games in Australia.’ He hasn’t.”

When Crawley missed a home series against Sri Lanka two years ago with a broken finger, his place was so secure that England promoted Dan Lawrence as a makeshift opener instead of trialling a genuine rival. But now, his position is in jeopardy for the first time since Key, McCullum and Stokes took over.

It means Crawley’s task is obvious enough: to score so heavily for Kent at the start of the summer that he leaves England with no choice but to pick him. The problem is that he has hardly ever done so: Crawley has scored just seven hundreds in 73 first-class appearances for Kent and only once, in 2023, has he averaged over 35 for them across a Championship season.

The fact he will be playing for Kent is notable in itself. Crawley came through their academy and has shown admirable loyalty, signing rolling one-year contracts with his home club. But his willingness to play second-division cricket speaks to the fact he has never needed to prove his ambition – as, say, Jordan Cox did, when moving to Essex in a bid to further his England credentials.

Key pledged on Monday to repair the fractured relationship between county cricket and the England set-up. He will shortly appoint four representatives – two from each Championship division – to a new ‘county insight group’ which will play a particularly significant role over the next month while a suitable candidate for the national selector vacancy is found, and with McCullum back home in New Zealand.

Key name-checked Asa Tribe, who has impressed on England Lions tours, who must now prove himself against better attacks after Glamorgan’s promotion, while the top-scorer in Division One last year was Dom Sibley, an England discard. Keeper-batter James Rew could make a clear statement of intent by asking Somerset to open this season, after impressing at No. 4.

It is not quite as simple as picking the highest-scoring opener from the first two months of the season to partner Ben Duckett – whose own spot is vulnerable enough that he withdrew from the IPL this week. There is a balance to strike: it has long been clear that Championship cricket cannot fully replicate the demands of Test level, particularly in early season, and England will be wary not to overreact to the thirst for new blood by making sweeping changes.

On the Sky Cricket podcast, Key was asked specifically if Sibley – and Haseeb Hameed and Rory Burns – stand any chance of a recall, as consistent county run-scorers who have come and gone at Test level. “If we feel that they can go and do it against the best bowlers in the world, then everyone’s got a chance of playing,” he said. “Our decision has to be on who do we think can play against Matt Henry and do that.”

The mere mention of Henry’s name may be enough to bring Crawley out in cold sweats, after their one-sided duel in New Zealand in late 2024. Crawley keeping his place after that tour was a prime example of the “lack of consequence” to which Key referred; it will take someone else walking out to open at Lord’s on June for England’s fans to be convinced that he is serious.

Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98

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