Zak Crawley exclusive on England start, debut nerves, abandoned Sri Lanka tour and why he's not on social media

Zak Crawley's early steps in Test cricket have come as a surprise — to him and others.

A surprise to him, as his first two Tests, in New Zealand before Christmas and South Africa at New Year, came due to injuries on the eve of each match to Jos Buttler, then Rory Burns.

A surprise to others, because Crawley was still only 21 and had a modest first-class record: three centuries and an average of 31. There was little doubt that he was picked on potential this winter; eyebrows were raised among fans and fellow pros alike.

The night before his first Test in Hamilton, Crawley rates his nerves as “100 out of 100”. He did not bat until the third day, but his emotions told as he leaden-footedly wafted behind for one from his position at no6.

But that inauspicious start set in trail a record-equalling start to his Test career, as he made his top score in each of his first five innings. The run was broken when he followed 66 with 24 in Johannesburg at the end of England’s 3-1 series win.

He and his opening partner, Dom Sibley, more than played their part, posting successive opening stands of 70, 107 and 56. The century stand, remarkably, was England’s first for the opening wicket in three years.

With each innings, Crawley feels he has learned more and felt the nerves lift.

He felt the confidence that comes from taking a pair of blinding catches, as he did at Cape Town, or the lessons learned when getting a bit carried away against Kagiso Rabada, as he did in the second innings of the same Test.

By the final two Tests, he was showing a strong all-round game against a decent attack, containing Rabada and Anrich Nortje. “The best month of cricket of my life,” is his assessment.

“One hundred per cent I learned more every innings,” he says. “It was also the fact that I wasn’t as nervous each time. In New Zealand, I was 100 out of 100 nervous.

"In Cape Town, I was a 95 and by the end I was a 75. I was still very nervous, but the nerves I had in the first couple of innings, I’d never experienced anything like that.

“You become more comfortable in that environment, you are around good players, facing great bowlers in the nets, so you are always going to improve in parts of your game and I feel like I definitely did that.

"You always get a few butterflies, but that was proper, sleeping about half an hour the night before my debut.”

Straight after South Africa, England sent Crawley and Sibley to Australia with the Lions, on another experience-gathering mission of a transformative winter.

The signs were promising that Crawley could continue his encouraging form on the aborted tour of Sri Lanka, where he made 43, 91 and a first-class 105 in three warm-up innings, having never played on the subcontinent before.

“Even if I had been out of nick, it would have been really frustrating to come home from an England tour,” he says. “It just so happened to be a bonus that I felt in really good touch, which made it even more frustrating.”

By then, the questions around Crawley’s selection were quietening. England selector Ed Smith believed he had the game to handle the step up, because Canterbury has been a tough school for batting in recent years, and Crawley’s average opening was 37.5 — better than lower down.

A high-class hundred against a Nottinghamshire attack containing Aussie quick James Pattinson when no one else in Kent’s top six reached double figures helped, too.

“Even though batting at Canterbury hasn’t been easy for the last couple of years, which maybe [the selectors] took into account, my stats weren’t quite there,” he says.

“I knew I’d been picked on potential, but that didn’t bother me. I don’t care how I get picked, I just want to get picked. It was great, a massive surprise.”

Now, armed with a sense of what is required at the top level — “mental toughness, patience and ability, because you might have to wait an hour for a bad ball” — Crawley’s aims this year, before life went into lockdown, were to “score a lot more runs than I have been in Championship cricket”, and to find that “one big score that would really settle me down at Test level”.

Until that comes, he is blocking out the noise. Unlike most people his age, Crawley is not on social media.

“I’d never post anything, but you find yourself just looking at other people’s accounts and you’re wasting time,” he says. “There’s cricket reasons, too.

"I don’t want to read people bigging you up too much, or people putting you down too much.”

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