No, he doesn’t exactly inspire thoughts of relentless consistency, but we always like to believe that young cricketers might still learn a thing or two.

How can we be convinced Crawley will never turrn into Strauss? I just watched Crawley fail twice in two days, both times because he doesn’t (most of the time) know where the off stump is, and doesn’t, for some obscure reason, use his height to get to the pitch of the ball. Some nice strokes, sure, but an impact player, no.

Without actively arguing in his favour, we don’t really get how people can be so convinced of Crawley’s whole future. We know he’s been around a while, but he is still two years younger than Andrew Strauss was when he made his Test debut.

Even autocorrect’s against the poor fella.

Foakes, not Flakes

Atapattu started with four successive ducks. This permanently deflated his average, significantly at first, without causing the selectors to doubt his quality. He was consistent once he got going. Crawley is the most inconsistent batsman in Test history. He will probably score another hundred or two, but his average will never reach 30. He remains an irrational choice.

Mike Gatting after 33 tests averaged 26.90 with 1 century, he’d just started his 30 ish test run of being good.

We might do a version of our old Ian Bell campaign.

https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ian-bell-for-england-good-or-bad/2009/07/23/

Looking forward to your forthcoming Sensible Ashes series btw.