Have you heard the one about the ballet critic and the dog poo? In February the Hanover State Opera’s ballet director Marco Goecke was so incensed by a bad review written by the Frankfurter Allgemeine ballet critic Wiebke Hüster that he tracked her down in public and smeared the excrement of Gustav, his 14-year-old dachshund, in her face. Now, I think we can all agree that as reactions to criticism go, it’s a bad one.
Goecke later described his attack on Hüster, with an astounding degree of understatement, as “certainly not super”. He also refused to apologise, describing his cack-handed actions as the result of years of “annihilatory criticism”. As excuses go, Marco, that one’s crap.
When I read this unfortunate and frankly mind-boggling fecal tale, it made me think of someone else who has been having an unpleasant time of it recently – Zak Crawley. For “annihilatory criticism”, Marco, try being a professional sportsperson who messes up. Try being a footballer who misses a crucial penalty or gives away a critical foul. In fact, try being any professional sportsperson in this age of social media and febrile fandom. Heck, try being an England cricketer out of nick with the Ashes looming. Try being Zak Crawley.
Crawley’s entire 33-Test career has been played out under a question mark. Picked on promise rather than weight of runs, the nagging feeling is that he has been cosseted from the get-go, that he was the favourite of the former selector Ed Smith and is very much the pet project of the current managing director, Rob Key. Crawley is the cricketing Tamagotchi passed between the pockets of the two men who keep the teamsheet – he’s been given and greedily gobbled up too many chances that weren’t afforded others with better records.
A sparkling innings of 267 against Pakistan in 2020 was the knock that should have signalled his arrival as a major player in the Test arena but, as time went on, Test matches came and went and his notable scores became sparser, his average plummeted. Crawley often looks so good – in his pomp he is a hybrid of Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen – he is in possession of a destructive classicism. And yet the numbers look bad – in 2021 Crawley averaged only 10.81 in Tests yet he still described last summer as his “worst ever”.
The 267 against Pakistan increasingly looked like an anomaly, a fluky totem, less a bellwether and more an albatross that not only hung limply around his neck but squawked and defecated down his long back with each low score that followed.
The opener now has three tons for England in and among some other plucky knocks, but there’s a lingering whiff of too few and far between, that each score has bought him time rather than cemented his place. Crawley was picked as the player of tomorrow, and you know what they say about tomorrow.
With the Ashes looming the thoughts of the cricketing public turn to Test match selection. The rise of Harry Brook and the return of Jonny Bairstow leave a selection conundrum that, whichever way you spin it, leave underperforming Crawley as the fall guy.
Crawley has been firmly backed at every turn by Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, and the two men will no doubt have been gladdened by dispatches from Canterbury this weekend where he stroked 170 runs against Essex. His innings was a showcase of shot-making, dismissive pulls and powerful drives. In a brief interview afterwards, Crawley spoke of enjoying himself, something which he hadn’t done for a long time. His average under McCullum still languishes under 26; even in the past year of the Bazball circus Crawley has often looked the solitary sad clown.
That is understandable right? For the past few years Crawley has had to live each day with a cloying scrutiny, a building pressure, had to play on with the sense that the walls are falling in and the knives are out, that he is the one in the crosshairs. It must be exhausting.
Admirably, and sensibly, Crawley does not use social media. In an interview with the Evening Standard not long after his Test debut, Crawley spoke about blocking out online noise: “I don’t want to read people bigging you up too much, or people putting you down too much.”
This shunning of social media has no doubt helped the 25-year-old over the past few years, preserved his mental health and capacity to keep going. Not for Crawley the prickly defensive tweet or emotional Instagram post. Part of him has remained unknowable. It’s a sound approach but a rare one in most professional sports people or indeed anyone his age, but perhaps that is changing.
Emma Raducanu is said to have deleted all social media, including WhatsApp, from her phone. If not a total withdrawal, yet, it’s still a significant move for the 20-year-old, given she has 2.5m Instagram followers who are used to hearing from her almost daily, not to mention a host of corporate sponsors.
A quick scour of her Instagram now has a ghoulish feel, with most posts obviously published in order to fill a contractual agreement. Raducanu has said she is “living under her own little rock” and is “zoning in on herself”. Her recent run of poor form and spate of injuries, coupled with an endless stream of online comment and criticism, are no doubt factors: “If you do good or bad, people are going to come at you regardless.”
Writing in the Sunday Times last week, Rob Stephen described Raducanu’s digital detox as “a lesson for us all”, noting that there are numerous studies that show how social media can lead people, particularly young people, down a path of loneliness and self-loathing. He sees it first-hand (Stephens is a teacher and master in charge of cricket at Tonbridge school – coincidentally Crawley’s alma mater – though their time there didn’t cross, he and his fellow staff members are pleased Crawley is back in the runs) and is unequivocal: “We need to actively push back against the creeping, purposeless and [literally] depressing march of smartphone addiction.”
He is not alone of course, we all know this stuff and yet it is difficult to give up, especially for those who can earn thousands of pounds for a single post.
So we come to the recent case of Harry Brook. Crawley’s England teammate has had a gilded year – four princely hundreds and an average of more than 80 in Test cricket resulting in him being snapped up by the IPL franchise Sunrisers for a huge fee. Brook struggled initially, three low scores bringing plenty of scorn online from cricket fans who failed to see what all the fuss and money was about.
In his fourth match Brook blitzed 100 off 55 balls. With the sweat still on his brow, a bristling Brook crowed: “There are a lot of Indian fans out there who’ll say well done tonight. But they were slagging me off a few days ago. Glad I could shut them up.” Brook admits that he was distracted by the online noise and it’s clear that it got to him, which is interesting in a year in which he has been so lauded. It is never enough.
Failure is written through cricket, particularly batting – your next low score is never far away. With three further low scores Brook has invited even more vitriol and online noise. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to follow the lead set by Crawley and latterly Raducanu. The only real way to “shut them up” is to log off. Otherwise it can be a messy old business.
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
