Zak Crawley batted as if he had given up all hope of retaining his England place. Kent needed 261 to win, for an important victory to boost their morale – and to his 21st ball he tried a shot that many England openers would never have attempted in their whole career.
If this game was Crawley’s last-chance saloon – England’s first Test squad is expected later this week – he had a couple of drinks, swept out of the swing-doors and went down in a hail of gunfire from the sheriff’s men. Telegraph Sport has suggested he should reinvent himself, but no, not yet, he is only 28, and he was going to bat the same old way, with all its strengths and all its weaknesses.
As no member of England’s management team has cared to fall on his sword, and take responsibility for an assault on the Ashes that was not so much a bang as a whimper, it has to be a player who gets the chop; and Crawley seems to know already who that is going to be.
After Kent had taken the one remaining Gloucestershire wicket, Crawley walked out promptly with his partner Ben Dawkins, who is almost as tall, and the two umpires. It was so chilly that they wore black gloves, and Crawley might have wondered if this was ominous: that a black finger would soon be raised against him.
Crawley hit his first ball for four: it was little more than a leg-glance but this is one of his strengths, to set the scoreboard rolling immediately, taking the attack to the bowler. Shades of the opening ball of the 2023 Ashes, which Crawley cover-drove at Fortress Edgbaston (only it turned out not to be).
A single off his second ball, again off Will Williams, took Crawley up the other end. But there is no setting up of a stall. Crawley does not play himself in; he plays his shots until he gets out.
In the fifth over, bowled by a cagey Tasmanian seamer Gabe Bell, Crawley tried an extraordinary shot, trying to hit a length ball over mid-on and miscuing a four. The next ball he nailed with an almost straight-drive, the one where the bowler thinks of a low-down caught-and-bowled, but too late because the ball has shot past.
Crawley was soon facing Williams again, and frustrated not to get the first three balls away. James Bracey was standing up, keeping Crawley in his crease, restricting his options. The fourth was straighter. Crawley went again for the drive that whips the ball over mid-on, preferably for six, and completely missed.
It is a sound saying that Test-class openers do not get bowled – not clean-bowled, perhaps the occasional unclean-bowled when dragging on. But there the stumps were, bail-less, and Crawley had not even got a bat on it.
In what might have been his comeback season, or his re-inventing season, Crawley has scored 9, 20, 26, 5, 27, 31, 44, 15, 1 and 17 for Kent in the championship: 195 runs at an average of 19.