Cricket

Zak Crawley: England ‘need to stay positive’ despite defeat to India

Zak Crawley says that England will not allow their shortcomings in India to derail their positive approach to Test cricket but admits that a bit of “refinement” is needed to capitalise on their positions of dominance, such as the one that slipped through their fingers in the fourth Test in Ranchi last month.

Crawley believes Bazball needs “a bit of refinement”•Getty Images

Even so, the challenge of facing Bumrah, with his high pace, wide range of skills and idiosyncratic action, is not something that can be easily replicated in training.

“I love facing the best bowlers in the world. Him, Cummins, a few others, but he would probably be the best I have faced,” Crawley said. “He bowls fast anyway and lets it go later, so it feels even quicker. Then it is just a weird action, so it is hard to pick up at times and he has got tremendous skill. He swings it both ways, with a slower-ball yorker, so, yeah, he’s a phenomenal bowler. It was tricky but I loved it.”

Though he stood out among England’s batters, Crawley’s series record still paled against that of his opposite number Yashasvi Jaiswal, whose 712 runs included back-to-back double-centuries in Visakhapatnam and Rajkot. But, he said, those efforts didn’t necessarily make him more hungry for big scores, because his best cricket invariably comes when he limits his focus to one ball at a time.

“Whenever I have looked too far ahead like that, that is how you get out straight away,” Crawley said. “Actually, a couple of those occasions I was thinking, ‘I need to get a big score’ and I wasn’t in the process. That is why – as simple as that – I got out.

“At Old Trafford in the summer, I was just trying to bat and bat time, I wasn’t thinking about getting a hundred. I was very present and it’s quite hard to get into that mindset. Whenever I’ve got into that mindset, I’ve managed to get a decent score, and if I got ahead of myself, I haven’t.”

England do not play another Test series until the arrival of West Indies in July, and so there is plenty time for the players to absorb the lessons of the India series.

“It just needs a bit of refinement,” Crawley said. “We always talk about absorbing pressure and putting pressure back on. The last couple of years we’ve done the putting back on pretty well, and we’ve spoken about maybe picking those moments to absorb at the right times as well. We can certainly refine that.

“That’s not to say we’re going to get more negative. We will still try to play the way we have and try to score quickly, but just pick those moments where they’re on top. We need to make sure we stay positive and don’t let a tough result get in the way of what we’re done really well over the last couple of years.

“[India] have won 17 home series on the spin, so it would have had to be pretty special for us to turn it over and we will not get too down on ourselves. We’ll still stick to what we know but just be slightly better.”

Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. @miller_cricket