Even Zak Crawley’s farewell edge, the final act of his own sublime, genre-defying, really quite confusing Ashes series, was a lovely thing. Some people are just great edgers. Michael Vaughan’s edges always seemed to fly, elbow high, dreamy timing, with a lovely crisp clear woody sound.
Crawley was on 73 at the time. Pat Cummings was bowling the second over after lunch. The ball was not quite there for the drive, but on the other hand very much there for the drive because, well, Crawley, feelings, moments, team energy.
The edge was crisp and delightfully firm, zinging into the hands of Steve Smith at second slip. It felt like the perfect bookend to Crawley’s first ball, the first of the innings and the day, a wide one from Mitchell Starc that Crawley drove through cover, bringing the bat down in a lovely free arc, the easy balance, the total lack of tension, an act of intimidation in itself. Perhaps Stuart Broad now has a No 2 all-time favourite Ashes moment.
In between those two deliveries Crawley produced, if not the best batting of the day – that came from Joe Root, playing like a wonderful sunlit dream of Joe Root – but the most layered and indeed the most vital to England’s cause in building a position of strength in this final Test.
Crawley produced exactly the right innings for the match situation, as he did at Manchester and Birmingham, although this is perhaps overstating his sense of nuance given England under Stokes-McCullum basically always want the same innings and Crawley is just Crawley every time.
His progress through this series, instant Crawley every time, has brought to mind the Andy Warhol line on why he adored Coca-Cola, nectar of the American consumer dream, because all the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Watch him bat for any period of time and you are essentially watching the same high-end, alluringly flawless substance, an opener who looks at every moment like the best opener in the world, right up until the moment he gets out (for 12 or 7 or 246) and Crawley time is over.
This is not meant to be disparaging. How could it be? Crawley has, by any batting metric, had a sublime Ashes summer. Here, he played beautifully and fearlessly, creating tone and energy and vibes when other iterations might have stumbled, departing with England 140 for two and zipping along at over five runs an over.
Those Ashes numbers then. Crawley has finished his series with 480 runs at an average of 53.3 and a strike rate of 89. On the face of it this is the greatest performance by any England opener in the Ashes in England, certainly in the modern age, perhaps ever.
Alastair Cook in 2010-11 and Vaughan 10 years earlier have had more spectacular away series. Tim Robinson averaged more but scored fewer runs less quickly in 1985. Mike Atherton scored more but averaged less in 12 innings in 1993. Chuck in the ability to affect the game and the extreme quality of this Australia attack. Combine runs, average and strike rate and Crawley is basically out there on his own.
Although even here, in the hard numbers, there is a conundrum. Just look at the scores: 61, 7, 48, 3, 33, 44, 189, 22, 73. Er. Wait. Really? This is the greatest home Ashes series? It’s like a maths puzzle that makes less sense the more you look at it. What colour is that dress? Why do the stairs keep going round but not going down? And how, exactly, has Zak Crawley just had the best modern-day home Ashes series for an England opener?
It comes down to, of all things, consistency. New, peppy, adrenal consistency. The job in this team is not to sit in and bat time, but to make the board rattle around, to create counter-intuitive pressure, to create, if we may, a vibe. All the Crawley 17s the Crawley 28s are the same. All of them are good.
Even this has involved defying the orthodoxies. The England management have said they do not expect consistency from Crawley, but consistency is what he has given. More so, it turns out, than every one of his dour and unforgiving predecessors in the role, the leave-masters, the block-nihilists. This is how you do it chaps. Have a dash. Have another dash. Have a dash consistently.
His innings on Saturday was lovely to watch, full of those familiar drives and clips, and some thrilling hard sweeps off Todd Murphy. It may be tempting to see something a little templated and hyper-engineered in Crawley, opening batting as rendered by an advanced piece of AI.
But he also has a sense of joy and – yes – command at the crease. Crawley bats like a Lord out there, with a folk memory in those drives and pulls of cricket as a game where the man from the big house bats, the most able ploughman gets to bowl, the rest of you farmhands fetch the ball.
At the same time he does also feel like the embodiment of how this oldest, crankiest form of the world’s least profitable major sport could evolve and survive. Flat pitches, bowlers plonked down other formats, fast-paced two-Test series. But put Crawley anywhere in the world and he will simply play like Zak Crawley.
His 73 off 76 balls helped set up a thrilling fourth day in prospect. And confirmed, at the same time, his own sunlit summer; a summer, for all its apparent iconoclasms, to compare with the greats.
