England opener says substandard surfaces in Championship are a “country-wide problem”
ESPNcricinfo staff11-Jan-2022
Zak Crawley has had a tough year despite his fluent 77 at Sydney•Getty Images
Zak Crawley says that England’s batting woes in the Ashes will not be improved until the standard of pitches in county cricket is raised, adding that he will stay committed to Kent rather than seeking a fresh start at a more prominent club because the issue is a “country-wide problem”.Crawley, 23, produced an eye-catching innings of 77 from 100 balls in the second innings at Sydney this week – only England’s second non-defeat in 14 Tests Down Under since 2011 – as the tourists salvaged a modicum of Ashes pride by drawing the fourth Test to end Australia’s hopes of a whitewash.The innings was another glimpse of the talents of a player who shot to prominence with his career-best 267 against Pakistan in 2020, but who mustered just 173 runs at 10.81 in 16 innings in the whole of 2021, even though that tally included a similarly free-flowing 53 at Ahmedabad in March.After replacing the under-performing Rory Burns for the third Test at Melbourne, Crawley is now part of an England batting line-up that has yet to pass 300 in eight innings of the series, but as the inquest begins into another failed Ashes bid, he is adamant that the players are being let down by the county game.”I’ve batted on poor pitches, really, my whole Championship career,” Crawley told reporters in Hobart, ahead of Friday’s fifth Test. “I feel like it’s been very hard to open the batting.”At my best, I’ve obviously shown something the England selectors have enjoyed. So I got picked with an average of 30, but there aren’t too many openers averaging a lot more than that at the moment.”The pitches have been very favourable to bowlers my whole career so far so until that changes… I feel like the average is a little bit lower than I’d like. I think 34-35 is a very good average for an opener these days, and that’s something that’s very different from 10 years ago.”Writing in the Daily Mail this week, England’s former captain Nasser Hussain suggested that Crawley would benefit from a move away from Kent to further his career. Despite currently hosting Division One cricket in the County Championship, Canterbury’s average runs per wicket since 2017 is 27.11, the fifth-lowest of the 18 first-class grounds.