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If Zak Crawley showed little sign of the pressure he was under as he became one of three English centurions on the opening day against Zimbabwe, it is possibly because he did not know he was under any.
The opener’s place in the team was presumed to be at risk after a poor run of form was followed by heavy hints that Jacob Bethell would be parachuted straight into the team on his return from the IPL, but after scoring 124 – England’s third-highest innings of the day after Ben Duckett’s 140 and Ollie Pope’s unbeaten 169 – the 27-year-old insisted he had heard no such rumours and had felt nothing from his coaches and colleagues except support.
“They obviously think I’m the right man for the job, and I have that belief in myself as well,” Crawley said. “I love being around this group, and when you play for your country you’re going to be surrounded by good players, and that pressure is going to be coming all the time. Throughout my career, from when I was very young until now, I’ve always been made a better player by people around me doing well and forcing me to be better.”
There were times when it was not clear that Crawley was surrounded by particularly good players, as Zimbabwe toiled in the field with little by way of reward or inspiration. After frolicking through the day at 5.65 runs an over England were 498 for three at stumps, just eight away from the all-time record for the most runs in the opening day of a Test they set in Rawalpindi in 2022, after Crawley and Ben Duckett put on 231 for the opening wicket, just two short of the personal best they set on that same day in Pakistan. Only once in the last 50 years has any other pair of English openers scored more.
Crawley’s recent past had been filled with much less encouraging statistics. In his previous 10 Test innings he had averaged 11.3 with a high score of 29 and a low in New Zealand at the end of last year that lasted four weeks and involved being repeatedly hunted and humbled by Matt Henry, who dismissed him six times in six attempts and took a total of 33 balls to do it. And while he had enjoyed some success in his early-season appearances for Kent – scoring three half-centuries, one of them unbeaten – in the first innings of those games he had scored one, none, one and six.
“I actually felt in good touch before the New Zealand series,” he said. “I got a couple of weird dismissals and a couple of decent balls and before you know it I’d had a terrible, terrible time. That’s the nature of the beast in Test cricket. But I feel like I found some rhythm in the last few weeks and things like that don’t really bother me. Like, good days and bad days. I try to forget them as quickly as possible and be as present as possible.”
Zimbabwe go into day two hoping it will be possible for all their players to be present. Shortly after lunch their opening bowler Richard Ngarava pulled up while gently jogging around the outfield, doubling over in pain and variously feeling his back and his right hamstring before climbing gingerly into an electric buggy, dragging his left leg aboard with his right arm. He eventually returned, albeit looking far from comfortable, having apparently suffered nothing more serious than a back spasm and the hope is that he will be able to bowl on Friday. “We’ll reassess tonight and then in the morning we’ll have a look,” said Charl Langeveldt, Zimbabwe’s bowling coach.
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Like the broad-shouldered Ngarava, the high-shouldered Blessing Muzarabani – the pair of them collectively known as the Twin Towers – bowled some excellent deliveries but was inconsistent. “Stepping up to the next level of playing a team like England, you need to be able to challenge them for longer periods,” Langeveldt said. “In our first period we were good, but then we struggled to contain them. With England they’ll hit your good balls as well. You really feel for the guys, they tried really hard.”
