Another continent, fresh pyjamas and, after the disappearance of spin in Australia, a contest dominated by the slow stuff. But it was natural at times to rewind to the Ashes during England’s series-opening defeat against Sri Lanka on Thursday, stretching their losing run away from home in one-day internationals to 11.
The flashbacks hit immediately when Jamie Overton took the new ball for the first time in his ODI career, a middle-overs-man miscast, the same way Brydon Carse was when he opened in the Tests. Sri Lanka’s fielding late on in the chase – Dunith Wellalage’s hopscotch grab on the boundary to end Rehan Ahmed’s pyro-party, Dhananjaya de Silva’s swooper at backward point to get rid of Liam Dawson – was clinical, reminiscent of Australia’s.
With the bat, the decision to recall Zak Crawley more than two years since his last ODI meant England played their Test top five, Jacob Bethell and Joe Root swapping at three and four. Like the Ashes the opening stand was brief, the dismissal familiar, Crawley undone on six by Asitha Fernando’s ploy. After jagging the ball into the right-hander, very nearly rattling the stumps, the quick opted for a wide outswinger with his next delivery; Crawley was lured in and edged behind.
The timing of Crawley’s reappearance in this format, reuniting him with Ben Duckett is curious. England announced their squad for this series after the fourth Test of the Ashes, the previous few weeks having been some of the most difficult of a three-year-old opening partnership, with five single-figure stands in their eight previous innings. The hope, you assume, was that a change of scenery and the absence of Mitchell Starc would get things working again.
But the closer you look into Crawley’s inclusion, the more you fall into the wider, structural problems of the English game. His knock on Thursday was his first in 50-over cricket since that last ODI appearance in December 2023. Like the cleanest strikers in the country, through no fault of his own, he doesn’t get the chance to play List-A cricket domestically, his presence demanded in the Hundred while the One-Day Cup decorates the outgrounds at the same time. He has been rehired without being allowed to make a proper case, gut feel clearly dominating when England have to pick someone new in their ODI side.
Harry Brook was interrogated on this very point before the series, asked about the difficulties of selecting for that ODI opening position when the format has gone missing domestically. Where do they put in the performances? Red-ball runs or through the Blast? “I think it’s just runs,” said the England white-ball captain. “Runs count for everything. If they’re scoring runs in the Blast, the Hundred, the One-Day comp gets them into the Hundred, the County Championship – you’ve just got to try and score runs as much as possible and runs are your currency as a batter. And the more consistent you are the more likely you are to get selected.”
The reasoning doesn’t match too well with the selection of Crawley, once described by Brendon McCullum, his head coach, as someone whose “skill set is not to be a consistent cricketer”. With a Test average stuck in the low 30s for more than two years, the most substantial evidence to put forward here are strong returns in the Hundred and Blast in 2025 after a couple of lean short-form seasons, finishing as the third highest run-scorer in the former.
Brook did go further on why England had landed on Crawley, highlighting the effectiveness of his opening partnership with Duckett – “the height difference, the left-right hand difference is something we like at the top there” – and arguing that “one-day cricket is similar to Test cricket at the start, he has all the attributes to go out there and bat and put them under pressure from ball one”. But, once more, this followed a series in which they averaged 19 together as a pair.
Again, as it’s been since he made his debut for England more than six years ago, there is the promise of Crawley, the tempting aesthetics: straight lines and a fairly unique beauty when he does step up, breaking hearts when he perishes in the 70s and 80s. He may well have unlocked something in his white-ball game last summer. But dependability at the top, with regular tons, is what once made this England ODI side great; Jason Roy, Alex Hales and Jonny Bairstow all averaged above 40 and struck at about 100 or more while opening the batting between the 2015 and 2019 World Cups.
There was one breakthrough for the tourists on Thursday when Duckett ground his way to 62, battling against Sri Lanka’s spin and his recent form. His own record in this format is up there with the pedigree England openers of the past, and you wonder just how much of that comes from having played a hefty amount of one-day cricket in the pre-Hundred days. For the left-hander, at the very least, Thursday night was no Ashes repeat.
