Posted by England confirmed the dropping of Kent’s Zak Crawley today when James Rew walked out to open the batting for Somerset. There are definitely more straightforward ways of announcing these things.
English cricket’s rune-readers have been broadly in agreement for a while now that Zak Crawley is no longer an England Test cricketer. No-one in a position to influence things has actually come out and said so. It’s just been impossible to envisage circumstances where the managing director of England men’s team, Rob Key, can concede that they’ve, “overvalued loyalty and overvalued having a settled team,” without then dropping him.
Sure, they could drop someone else instead, but that would rather rely on Crawley making an inarguable case for retention. With 12 hundreds in 143 first-class matches and an average of 31.67, that is not a thing he was ever going to do.
The only thing Crawley really had in his favour was that the guy England most want to pick right now – James Rew – is a middle-order batter.
We get the impression Rew likes being a middle-order batter. Why wouldn’t he? He’s scored thousands of runs there. But the vacancy is elsewhere. England love players showing ambition. They’ll have had a word. Words like ‘opportunity’ and ‘adaptability’ will have been bandied about.
‘No pressure, James, it’s entirely up to you, but from our perspective we think you’re made of the right stuff and we like players who are willing to get out of their comfort zones. We’ve got a problem and we feel like you could solve it.’
The flipside of that is of course that staying put and churning out middle-order runs would perhaps be viewed as being inflexible and cowardly.
So today James Rew walked out to open the batting for Somerset of his own volition and got bowled for 4 in the third over. Which doesn’t mean much. He made 7 and 0 batting in the middle order last week, after all.
But it does mean something for Zak Crawley because it tells us that England are so committed to finding a new opener, they’re willing to suggest to middle-order batters that they turn themselves into top order batters to plug the gap.
Our view is that this can work, but usually doesn’t – particularly in England where the new ball is so often a capricious bitch. It didn’t work for Dan Lawrence, for example.
Joe Root performed creditably enough when he was pushed into an opening role for similar reasons – but then Joe Root’s a genius. The fact he still only lasted six Tests there underlines that one way or another it was only ever an interim measure.
Further England squad news?
So that’s one bit of implicit England Test squad news. Is the fact that Ben Stokes opened the bowling today another?
Was this a Durham decision or an England decision? And given that two of the key decision-makers would have been the England Test captain and Marcus North, the new England chief selector, how would you even tell the difference?
We suspect and hope it was just a Durham thing. Given his clanking physiology, ‘Ben Stokes, opening bowler,’ would surely be even more of a stopgap move than Rew as opener.
The other aspect to this is that James has a younger brother, Thomas, who is at least as good a keeper and a more attacking batter. So he is likely in time to keep & bat 6/7. Therefore for Somerset, asking James to open, a position the county has struggled with for the last 10 years, also makes complete sense even before taking the vacant England opening spot into account.
Well hopefully all that’s a conveniently aligned desire rather than rationalisation of someone else’s. The timing makes us a little uncomfortable, but as we say, that’s not to say it won’t work out.
Like Rob, I see some logic in this change right now.
Middlesex has made a similar(but lower profile) change after four matches, asking Ben Geddes to open and making way for “bright future hard-hitting batsman” Caleb Falconer in the middle order.
The logic is that the modern style wants batters who can bat with purpose from quite early in the match opening the innings and the very best batters coming in 3, 4, 5, 6. Problem is, you don’t know who are going to be the very best long term. Joe Root turned out to be one of the very best, hence his “open the batting” experiment was relatively short-lived and quite rightly so.
Giving young destructive batters “a go” at opening, at least for a while, makes sense.
In short, modern-style batters who really do thrive as openers and stick to that position are rarer than “natural” middle-order batters. Hence the need for and logic in this kind of experiment. At least they’ve waited until May, by which time conditions (at least in the South) are more summer-like.
The notion that one of the very best players might flounder and get lost to the long term plan as a result of such an experiment is flawed. If a player hasn’t got enough spirit, tenacity and talent to overcome the occasional dip in form or failed experiment, they probably aren’t potentially one of the greats.
The worst example of a failed experiment is the dog years of Jimmy Anderson’s career when the “powers that were” tried to remodel his action – remember? What didn’t kill him made him stronger. Let’s see how Ben Geddes gets on against the aging Jimmy this morning. Good experience for Geddes, whatever happens.
We’d agree that these things tend to work themselves out when it comes to the very best players – which is why we mentioned Root. Experimentation is also part and parcel of pursuing a career for those who are perhaps a step down from that status.
We suppose outside influences often shape those experiments, but this just feels a little bit of a knee jerk response to a short term scenario to us, rather than the first sighting of a long held plan.
But, again, that isn’t to say it won’t work out. Hindsight suggests plenty of major life decisions got made for flimsy reasons.
For what it’s worth, the headline was more shaped by the desire for a pun than our actual feelings on this matter, which are a bit more ambivalent.
Not just any pun, KC. A magnificent pun in line with one that I slipped into one of my comments on your site a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/clamour-model-cant-james-rew-just-carry-on-breathing-down-peoples-necks-for-a-bit/2026/04/23/#comment-297913
I am sincerely flattered.
One can only marvel at how you’ve combined self-compliment with plagiarism accusation in such a charming package. Your diplomacy skills are wasted in the King Cricket comments section, Ged Ladd.
Thanks KC.
I am feeling smug this afternoon about the prescience of my comment about Ben Geddes, who might himself stand accused of plagiarising my nom de plume.
I personally would feel more comfortable if they picked one of the in-form specialist openers (Gay or Sibley) to open but realise that is boringly conventional.
Doesn’t Gay bat at three?
Division One table looking pretty good right now