Zak Crawley is Matt Henry’s bunny – no England opener has ever performed as badly

In the 1989 Ashes, after he asked to be dropped from England’s Test team, Graham Gooch saw fit to change the message on his answer machine. “I’m not here right now,” Gooch purportedly quipped. “I’m out… probably lbw to Terry Alderman.”

Zak Crawley, you suspect, will need similar good humour to reflect on his ordeal against Matt Henry in New Zealand. When England began a torrid six-over passage at the end of the third day in Hamilton, Crawley knew exactly what awaited: the multifarious skills of Henry, swinging and seaming the ball both ways on an excellent line and length and at sharp pace. Five previous times in the series, Crawley had been braced for the challenge; on each occasion, he was whisked out in Henry’s new-ball spell.

The very first ball of England’s second innings – jagging into Crawley, and almost uprooting his stumps – nearly brought the same result. Henry’s mastery was such that, after beating Crawley’s inside edge, his next delivery moved away to beat his outside edge. His fifth ball moved back into Crawley’s pads and he was given out leg-before. The decision was overturned on review. But Crawley’s reprieve never felt more than temporary.

So it proved. At the end of the fifth over of England’s innings, Henry’s last ball of the day beckoned with Crawley certain that his stumps would be targeted. Pre-empting Henry’s angle of attack, Crawley made a concerted effort to shuffle his front pad across and forward – thereby giving himself a chance of avoiding an lbw decision. Yet when Crawley was indeed struck on his left pad, he was given out. His review revealed a borderline decision: the ball was projected to be clipping the outside of leg stump – the sort of decision that was seldom given out in the days before the Decision Review System. The remainder of Crawley’s contribution amounted to shaking his head and chuntering in despair as he walked off.

All batsmen need a little fortune; few have craved it as much as Crawley in New Zealand. Henry is a wonderful fast bowler and averages 18 in 2024. But there is no batsman that he has left as forlorn as Crawley. This series, Henry has bowled 33 balls to Crawley; these have conceded 10 runs while taking six wickets.

Along the way, Henry has dug into Crawley’s technique with clinical precision. Henry’s full length to target the front pad, his cocktail of swing and seam movement both into and away from the batsman and sheer relentlessness just outside off stump have combined to leave Crawley bereft of runs.

The upshot has been to reawaken English cricket’s conversation about Crawley. For followers of the Test team, the terms of the debate have long been familiar. On one side lies Crawley’s penchant for attacking the new ball through crunching drives and powerful pulls when balls are only fractionally short of a length. That is a combination of skills that allows him to “chase moments”, to use head coach Brendon McCullum’s phrase. On the other side rests something more mundane: the sense that a Test match opener should simply be more consistent.

In a sense Crawley’s travails in New Zealand have not changed these underlying realities; his high-risk style means that periods of strife are priced in, among admirers and adversaries alike. Nor have they altered his fine past two series against India and Australia – England’s opponents in two five-Test clashes next year.

Yet Crawley leaves New Zealand with his position in the side newly imperilled. Jacob Bethell’s sparkling entrance to Test cricket has created a new pressure on Crawley’s place when Jamie Smith returns from paternity leave.

No England opener has ever batted as much in a single series and ended with a lower average than Crawley’s 8.7. By the time of England’s next Test, he will be 27 – an age by which potential should long ago have given way to regular performance. Yet, 17 months on from an Ashes series that was heralded as his breakthrough, Crawley’s output shows no indications of becoming more reliable. In 14 Tests this year, he averages just 27.8; the number falls to 19.2 in nine matches since the start of the English summer, and just 17.4 in six games since returning from a broken finger.

For all the talk of Crawley as a match-winner – albeit an infuriatingly inconsistent one – his returns in Tests that yield a positive result are strikingly thin. Of Crawley’s 53 Tests, 43 have so far resulted in victory or defeat. Crawley has mustered just one century, at an average of 26.1, in such games; his average rises only infinitesimally, to 27.1, in England wins. A curious fact of Crawley’s career is that three of his four hundreds have come in draws, though his Ashes 189 at Old Trafford would not be in this category barring the Manchester rain.

And so, for all Crawley’s dazzling shot-making, his unusual preference for high pace and his formidable head-to-head record against Australia’s leading bowlers, the bare facts of his career are increasingly inescapable. After 53 Tests, Crawley averages only 30.5. A total of 102 Test batsmen have scored 2,500 runs while batting in the top three. Only one, Sri Lanka’s Roshan Mahanama, averages less than Crawley.

Given the chance, Crawley will intermittently play superb innings for England; the debate is whether he does so with anything like enough regularity to justify England’s faith. If this question is not new, Bethell’s emergence means that England have new alternatives to Crawley. And, for all their empowerment of talented players, McCullum’s regime have consistently demonstrated ruthlessness when they spy better options.