The thought crept up on me during the start of England’s ultimately unsuccessful run chase in Visakhapatnam: I hadn’t heard a certain joke in a while. You probably know it, the one that did the rounds for quite some time. That you could be anywhere in the world, switch on your phone and find that England were 20-odd for two with Joe Root striding out to the rescue.
The Bazball makeover has done many things, but one of the headline change-ups is the establishment of a fully functioning opening partnership. When Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley walked out in the final session to begin the road to 399, the overriding feeling wasn’t how many wickets England would lose in a tricky late passage, but rather how many runs they’d chop off the target before the close. Such a view was testament to the Test team’s clear identity but also down to the pair’s excellence so far.
The numbers have been pretty ever since Crawley and Duckett paired up in Pakistan at the end of 2022. Their first partnership was a colossal 233 on a flat one in Rawalpindi, 174 of those runs up before lunch. The average as a partnership is hovering just below 50, and they’re doing well on their own, too. Duckett is averaging 49.65 in his second go as a Test cricketer, while Crawley’s is 43.37 across his last 13 Tests. They’re both in a hurry, their strike-rates above 85.
The most impressive figures will follow in the next Test at Rajkot, though. Two more innings as a pair will take them to 27 together, making them England’s longest-lasting Test opening partnership since Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook were kicking it together more than a decade ago. Rory Burns and Dom Sibley stuck it out for 26 innings, but they played a very different game to these two.
It’s worth remembering the revolving door that followed up top after Strauss’s retirement in 2012, players brutally culled after a few lean scores, with Cook at the other end for another few years, presumably wondering if he’d ever find love again. There were the older heads who had served their time in county cricket (Nick Compton, Michael Carberry), and the white-ball hitters who had to do it against the red (Alex Hales, Jason Roy). There were the men down the order tasked with solving the problem from within (Root, Moeen Ali), and the ones who were quick to a first ton but didn’t make it past the summer (Adam Lyth, Sam Robson).
Burns offered a touch of stability after Cook left but was forever interrogated over his homespun technique, eventually losing his spot after the 2021-22 Ashes. Crawley, his opening partner at the end of that humiliation, survived. In fact, for a time, that’s all he did, staying in the XI despite the regular nicks behind, that breakout 267 against Pakistan a long-forgotten relic of the pandemic. When it came to the end of the first summer under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, it was Crawley’s partner, Alex Lees, who was dropped, despite averaging a touch more across seven home Tests (Lees’s 25.15 to Crawley’s 23). McCullum claimed that inconsistency was expected from a strokemaking opener, that Crawley was in there to “chase great moments”. But the optics weren’t great, all this love and opportunity for a player whose longtime mentor, Rob Key, was now running the England men’s side.
The introduction of Duckett seems to have been Crawley’s turning point, though perhaps he also needed some time to get used to the new way. “Even last year to some extent,” Crawley told Wisden Cricket Monthly shortly after the 2023 Ashes, “with Baz and Stokes coming in, I didn’t fully buy into it, and it wasn’t until this winter that I decided to play my own game and be more aggressive. I wish I’d done it a bit earlier in my career.”
Together, it clicks. Crawley, at 6ft 5in, plonks his front foot forward and dreamily laces it straight: Duckett, working in a different climate at 5ft 7in, will plonk anything he sees outside off. There’s the righty-lefty element to deal with too, making the bowler’s existing migraine even more painful. And they’ve done the hard work, bravely freewheeling before they had records to speak of. Now they’ve shown what they can do, the loose dismissals can be easily forgiven.
They’ve begun well in India, where the threat isn’t as significant in the opening exchanges. Jasprit Bumrah’s danger has been more pronounced when he’s got a sweat on and is making it reverse, while his new-ball partners Mohammed Siraj and Mukesh Kumar have largely been bystanders. There have been three stands worth at least 50, the outlier a partnership of 45 inside 10 overs. Duckett keeps getting useful starts; Crawley nabbed himself a pair of gorgeous 70-odds in the last Test. And then suddenly it hits you: these two, dealing in more shots than a student night out, are the consistent ones.
The argument to pose is that England could almost do with them going the other way, harking back to the words McCullum echoed about Crawley a couple years ago. A few low scores will be forgotten if either one can deliver a knock that doesn’t just decorate an innings but headlines the match and series. But perhaps that’s just old-timer-in-the-studio chat, conventional musings on how pretty fifties win you naff all. This lot, of course, don’t really do conventional.
For now, what’s clear is that this combination is working. After a decade of regularly showing top-order nurdlers and dashers the door, that will do.
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
