The England opening batsman Zak Crawley has revealed that batting in India in the winters last year was so difficult that when he scored 10 runs there, it felt like a good score to him. Crawley had not played in the first two test matches on the India tour, but he was brought back into the side for the day-night test match in Ahmedabad and although he scored a fifty in the first innings he played, he couldn’t score much in the remaining three innings of the series.
Crawley has, since then, got further opportunities to play for England, even in the ongoing Ashes series in Australia, but his average in test cricket last year was 10 and even while playing in the county circuit last summer, Crawley couldn’t get to a three-figure score. The reason this downfall is hurting the England fans and selectors is that Crawley was considered the next big thing with the bat in the England cricket circles when he burst onto the scene with a 267 against Pakistan.
Zak Crawley thinks he hasn’t been able to score because of unfamiliar conditions
According to Zak Crawley, who was in a conversation with Daily Mail earlier today, his modest return to test cricket in recent times is purely down to the fact that he has had to play a lot of cricket in the conditions he is not used to. Talking about the India tour, Crawley said he never had the experience of playing on the kind of surfaces he played in India, with the ball turning square, and currently he is up against the unfamiliar conditions in Australia as well.
But, Crawley is still backing himself to score a hundred for England in the upcoming New Year test match at SCG. The young right-hander admitted that batting in Australia is a challenge because of the pace trio that the Kangaroos have got and all of them are always accurate and at the batsmen, but as the England skipper Joe Root has shown, runs can be scored against the Australian attack if the batsmen apply themselves and spend some time at the crease.
Zak Crawley said, "I haven't played my best cricket this year, but stats can be misleading. Earlier I went to India, I've never experienced anything like playing in India. Scoring 10 runs over there felt like a good score at the time". (To Daily Mail).
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) January 2, 2022
Advertisement
Joe Root and Dawid Malan are the only two England batsmen who have put on some sort of fight with the bat for England on the ongoing Australia tour. While Root has scored a fifty in all three test matches he has played, Malan has also got a couple of fifty-plus scores to his name, but apart from these two, none of the England batsmen has managed to get to the 50-run mark in the 6 innings so far.
