English cricket\u2019s 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\u2019s just been impossible to envisage circumstances where the managing director of England men\u2019s team, Rob Key, can concede that they\u2019ve, \u201covervalued loyalty and overvalued having a settled team,\u201d without then dropping him.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The only thing Crawley really had in his favour was that the guy England most want to pick right now \u2013 James Rew \u2013 is a middle-order batter. <\/p>\n We get the impression Rew likes being a middle-order batter. Why wouldn\u2019t he? He\u2019s scored thousands of runs there. But the vacancy is elsewhere. England love players showing ambition. They\u2019ll have had a word. Words like \u2018opportunity\u2019 and \u2018adaptability\u2019 will have been bandied about.<\/p>\n \u2018No pressure, James, it\u2019s entirely up to you, but from our perspective we think you\u2019re made of the right stuff and we like players who are willing to get out of their comfort zones. We\u2019ve got a problem and we feel like you could solve it.\u2019 <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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\u2019t mean much. He made 7 and 0 batting in the middle order last week, after all.<\/p>\n But it does mean something for Zak Crawley because it tells us that England are so committed to finding a new opener, they\u2019re willing to suggest to middle-order batters that they turn themselves into top order batters to plug the gap.<\/p>\n Our view is that this can work, but usually doesn\u2019t \u2013 particularly in England where the new ball is so often a capricious bitch. It didn\u2019t work for Dan Lawrence<\/a>, for example. <\/p>\n Joe Root performed creditably enough when he was pushed into an opening role for similar reasons \u2013 but then Joe Root\u2019s a genius. The fact he still only lasted six Tests there underlines that one way or another it was only ever an interim measure.<\/p>\n Further England squad news?<\/p>\n So that\u2019s one bit of implicit England Test squad news. Is the fact that Ben Stokes opened the bowling today another?<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Crawley-header-1-600x380.webp\")
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