For 156 minutes at the start of England’s second innings in Sydney, as he set about compiling the second-highest score of his Test career and propelled his team towards the draw that ensured they will avoid a series whitewash, Zak Crawley found himself experiencing something that not many English cricketers have managed in Australia this winter: having fun.
It was not just for his team that the fourth Test represented the end of a miserable run, as in his first match of 2022 the 23-year-old shrugged off the poor form that had dogged him in 2021 to re-establish himself in the side with an impressive innings of 77.
“It was not far off the most fun I’ve ever had on a cricket field,” he said on Tuesday. “I mean, that’s the reason I play the game, for days like that. I massively enjoyed it, absolutely loved it. Cricket, you get so many failures that you have to enjoy the good times. And when you’re playing nicely, it doesn’t get more fun than that.”
Having scored an apparently career-defining 267 in his final Test of 2020 against Pakistan in Southampton, at which point he was averaging 48.41 after 12 international innings, Crawley floundered in 2021. Across the year he averaged 10.81 in 16 Test innings and 23.14 across 37 first-class knocks for Kent and country.
“It’s all a great learning curve,” he said. “You tend to learn more from your failures than your successes and it wasn’t the year I wanted. We played some great opposition on some really tough pitches – I wasn’t too hard on myself in some regards. I learned a lot about myself and my game and I feel like I can push on from it and become a better player.”
It is true that he faced some particularly difficult sporting challenges in 2021, from India in Ahmedabad to Australia with the wind in their sails in Melbourne. “Playing in India against that spin and then at the MCG in that final session [on the second day] – they’re the two hardest spells of cricket I’ve ever had by a long way and I wouldn’t have thought that it would get much harder than those two experiences. You’ve just got to take them on the chin and move on and learn from them.”
While Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Rory Burns and Ollie Pope have first-class averages in the 40s or, in Pope’s case, 50s, Crawley’s languishes in the low 30s – 31.21 at present, down slightly since he made his England debut in December 2019. This he puts down to “the fact I’ve batted on poor pitches really my whole Championship career”. Unusually, his first-class average is worse – 29.15 – on his home ground of Canterbury.
“I don’t think it’s a Kent thing,” he said. “Obviously I’d like the pitch at Canterbury to be a little bit better. I don’t think it’s unfair of me to say. But I think pretty much all the grounds I’ve played on have been pretty poor. I can think of about two or three where I’ve got to them thinking that this is a really good wicket. The pitches have been very favourable to bowlers my whole career so far so until that changes …”
It is one of Crawley’s regrets that he has not “gone on to score big hundreds”, though he draws frequently on the memory of the one time he did. “I watch that innings frequently to be honest, when I’m going through bad form, because it’s a nice reminder that I’ve done it before and I can do it again,” he says of his 267. “Sometimes if you’re feeling a bit rough you can lose sight of the fact that you can play. I played really nicely that day, but I feel like I’m a better player now and that’s because of the failures I had last year. I learned a lot about myself, like what not to do almost. I would have liked to score a lot more runs, but for that I’m quite thankful.”
Whatever happens in this week’s final Test in Hobart, given the way the tour has panned out everyone involved with the England squad will leave with some failures to learn from. “The majority of it has been top class and just how I expected it to be – quite hostile Australia crowds and a hostile Australian team who are very good in their own conditions,” Crawley said. “Unfortunately we haven’t performed quite at our best but it’s a great experience and hopefully – we’ll see how my career turns out – but if I’m back in four years’ time then this experience will be very beneficial.”
