What does Zak Crawley have to do to get dropped? ...Middle East

PERTH — Zak Crawley has become a lightning rod for English anger following the two-day implosion in the opening Ashes Test. Yet the out-of-form opener is in no danger of losing his place anytime soon.

What the 27-year-old has to do to get dropped is a good question. Yet having kept faith with Crawley and invested so much in his opening partnership with Ben Duckett, the shocking start in Perth, where he scored a pair and lasted just 11 balls across both innings, will not change his standing with Brendon McCullum.

England’s coach made a point of backing the Kent man in the aftermath of Saturday’s shocking batting collapse that handed the first Test to Australia. “If he can get going, he can do some damage,” he said.

But the problem is Crawley has rarely got going of late. In fact, his career has stalled.

It's an incredible catch by Mitchell Starc Crawley bags a pair of ducks. Watch #TheAshes LIVE on TNT Sports and discovery+ pic.twitter.com/ku1hTD1gxf

His last century came in the one-off Test against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge last May. Yet his record in series against serious teams over the past 18 months is terrible. Last summer against India he averaged 32.22. Before that his averages in New Zealand (8.66), Pakistan (27.80) and at home to the West Indies (24.25) were even worse.

For his last century in any series, you have go back to the 2023 Ashes, where at Old Trafford he dismantled an attack of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood on his way to 189.

Therein lies the problem. England know the quality Crawley can produce, especially against Australia. His second innings in Sydney that helped his team secure a draw in the fourth Test of the 2021-22 Ashes showed just how good he can be in these conditions.

However, his traumatic experience in the first Test threatens to fatally undermine his confidence – and that’s something the Bazball brains trust need to work on ahead of next week’s day-night Test in Brisbane.

Having stuck with Crawley for the past three-and-a-half years, England cannot demur now. There have been so many points in that period where they would have been justified in dropping him.

But they kept faith precisely because they backed him to come good in this series.

One of the issues is that even if they wanted to replace Crawley, there is no specialist opening cover in the Ashes squad. The closest they have got is Jacob Bethell, who batted at No 3 last winter but has never opened in first-class cricket. It would appear unlikely he would be considered, unless as a last-minute injury replacement.

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Ben McKinney, the 21-year-old Durham opener, is in Australia with England Lions. The 6ft 7in batter is highly rated and scored an impressive 66 from 92 balls in the Lilac Hill warm-up against England’s first-choice attack. But throwing a kid with just 23 first-class games under his belt into the cauldron of an Ashes series risks damaging his fledgling career.

Fears that sticking with Crawley may turn the public against Bazball will also not change minds within the group. Even if England go down in flames in this Ashes series, and if Crawley continues to fail that’s more likely, the whole Bazball project will be dead anyway, chiefly because “Baz” McCullum will probably be sacked as coach.

So, expect Crawley, whose average as a Test opener stands at just 30.22, to play the whole series. More pace and bounce is expected in Brisbane, with the added complication of a hooping pink ball under floodlights. How then does he turn this around?

Former Australia opener Simon Katich, speaking to BBC Test Match Special, said: “It’s all around shot selection. He can get big runs when he bats well but when he doesn’t it can look ugly. You need to respect the conditions a lot more than he did.

“You would have thought in the second innings he probably would have learned from the first, know that Mitchell Starc is going to go out wider to him and make him cover drive.

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“That’s where you just have to let Starc come to you, let balls go and be prepared to grind it out for a few overs to get used to the pace and bounce before you start firing a few shots.

“So I just think for him it’s going to come down to the mentality. But the danger is if he’s being told we want you to keep being aggressive that might not work in those conditions.”

Whatever approach he decides to take in the rest of this series, for Crawley and England’s sake, it needs to work.

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