To restore trust in England’s Test team the people who led it into disarray on the Ashes tour will need to do more than drop Zak Crawley. It’s the zombie project that needs changing.
Crawley has seen both ends now. First he was unaccountable and undroppable in England’s system of unceasing loyalty to the chosen ones. Now the talk is that he’s likely to be sacrificed to save England’s officer class, itself the recipient of a huge reprieve after the fiasco of the Ashes.
Head coach Brendon McCullum and managing director Rob Key both stay, but Crawley goes? Somebody had to carry the can for England’s 4-1 defeat in Australia but it wasn’t the men in charge.
Crawley may be gone for some time, a la Captain Oates, or it could turn out to be a performative banishment, with a call to return when this bloody Ashes thing blows over. Either way they should know supporters are demanding a change of approach more than they are a new accomplice for Ben Duckett.
There is an air of busyness. Marcus North, Durham’s Australian director of cricket, is reported to be the new national selector. North has a close relationship with Ben Stokes but would be a further example of England looking overseas for help.
The Test squad to face New Zealand (4-8 June) will be announced on 18 May. Durham’s Emilio Gay and Somerset’s James Rew are tipped to replace Crawley, who averages 31 in Tests. There are situations vacant for seamers and of course a spinner. Shoaib Bashir didn’t bowl a single ball in the Ashes. Jacob Bethell’s rise is scripted to continue.
But behind the bustle, accountability remains murky, as it did so many times when Bazball batters were too easily dismissed. It’s not quite Harold Larwood being blamed for Bodyline, but Crawley losing his place months, or even years, after he should have been dropped for inconsistency strikes a discomfiting note. In Australia he scored 273 runs for an average of 27. Ollie Pope was ditched after three Tests, averaging 20. These were graveyard figures for a series that breaks people with technical or psychological flaws.
This time, a tombstone was needed for a concept that now hardly dares speak its name. When it was good, Bazball was a joyful summer vibe, a means of self-expression. But you didn’t need to be Mike Brearley to know it was a bad fit for Australian conditions.
It was McCullum and Key, not Crawley, Pope or Duckett (who averaged 20) who wrote the flimsy preparation plan and the manifesto for immolation in Perth and Brisbane. Stokes was the first of England’s politburo to argue for a correction and turned his own game round in favour of greater pragmatism as the tour went up in flames.
If atonement had to be made to England fans who were on the trail of tears round Australia, Crawley has made it easy for his bosses with a poor start to the county championship campaign. Legions of English cricket fans think he should have paid the price long ago for his inconsistency and his wafting outside stump. He survived with the occasional innings of startling fluency. McCullum told him to “chase moments”. The England management behaved as if patience from above was all he needed to fulfil his promise.
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His detractors though saw something else: a decadent streak made worse by England treating batters throwing their wickets away as mere details in a grander plan.
Historians may jump in here, but there is no precedent I can recall of self-destruction being excused as a price worth paying. Not in Australia. Not with Mitchell Starc steaming in or with Travis Head and Steve Smith at the crease. The reasons for England’s implosion this winter were numerous but naïve game management was comfortably No 1 on the list.
Unlike Crawley, the authors of those delusions are still in post for this summer’s Test series against New Zealand and Pakistan. From preparation to piss-up it all went wrong for them. But the post-mortem has been kind.
It’s not who will accompany Duckett at Lord’s on 4 June that matters so much as how much the dumping of Crawley would reveal about England’s plans to reacquaint themselves with reality.
The Key-McCullum-Stokes triumvirate must decide what to do about Bazball: resurrect its best bits, or leave it in its Australian cemetery? Their margin of error here is close to zero.This summer will reveal whether McCullum is a fundamentalist who is doing the job for his own personal gratification, or a responsible strategist who’s willing to let go of – or at least rewrite – his big idea.
The other day Ollie Robinson, the Sussex seamer who lost his central contract in 2024, told ESPN Cricinfo: “I had a text from Baz at the start of the season…” and, “Keysey rang me as well, to say, ‘take wickets, knock the door down’ and there’s still a spot for you.’”
Supposedly the “hotline” to counties is back. The closed shop is dead. But you don’t have to be an MCC grump to find the “Baz” and the “Keysey” in Robinson’s account slightly worrying. This England set-up maybe needs a little less chumminess and a few more boundaries, not only on the scoreboard but in the way it thinks.
Photograph by Gareth Copley / Getty Images