Zak Crawley is the luckiest player to have won as many caps as he has: Michael Vaughan

Former England captain and commentator Michael Vaughan has stated that the English opening batter Zak Crawley is the luckiest player to have won as many caps as he has at the moment in the longest format of the game.

Notably, Crawley went on to play 56 Tests, amassing 4751 runs at an average of 31.11 and a strike rate of 65.49 with only five centuries and 17 half-centuries. In his column for ‘Daily Telegraph, Vaughan made some important observations about Crawley’s changes from the Leeds Test to the second game in Birmingham.

“In my time watching, playing for and covering England, he is the player luckiest to have won as many caps as he has. He has to count himself fortunate to have played 56 games, whilst scoring just five hundreds, and averaging 31,” Vaughan wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.

“I would love to know why this week, with Bumrah not playing, he suddenly moved two inches outside off stump in his stance. If you do that, you should know that anything outside your eye-line can be left well alone. Instead, he got out in both innings driving with half a bat, with his left foot staying down the middle of the stumps,” he wrote.

Furthermore, Vaughan asserted that Crawley worries about the straight ball at the stumps trapping him lbw or bowled. Though at times, Crawley makes batting look easy, Vaughan stated that he has to score more runs at the top of the order instead of shining only once in a series.

“That is a mindset issue; he is so concerned about the straight ball, and being lbw or bowled, that he has got out chasing wide balls in his last three innings. It’s bizarre because in Leeds, Crawley had shown what he can do, and that he can be disciplined … Crawley is so exasperating because he has the game. He plays some glorious shots, and at times makes batting look easy. But he has to score more runs at the top of the order. It cannot be that his job is to produce a wow-factor moment once a series,” he went on to write.

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