Mark Butcher, a former cricketer for England, expressed his confusion about the choice of the hosts to give Zak Crawley, who has been under criticism, a chance to open the batting for them in the second test against South Africa at Old Trafford. Once again, Crawley will be playing for the hosts in the encounter that will commence on Thursday. He was selected for the starting XI (August 25).
After participating in 26 tests, Crawley has an average of 26.10, although having a peak score of 267. Many people feel that the opener’s poor performance in the innings loss to the Proteas at Lord’s was going to be the opener’s last chance to redeem himself. The total number of runs scored by Crawley over both innings in the last test was merely 22.
Mark Butcher believes that the ongoing support from the team’s captain, Ben Stokes, and Brendon McCullum is hurting the mental health of the opener. Butcher believes that Crawley needs a pause to think about the difficulties he is having with his technique.
England need to remove Zak Crawley from the spotlight. For his sake. pic.twitter.com/3MNoIeN8oS
— CricBlog ✍ (@cric_blog) August 19, 2022
What did Mark Butcher say about Zak Crawley?
While giving an interview to Sky Sports, he stated: “The opening batting order for England has been the focal point of much of the discussion recently. In his role as an opener, Zak Crawley has received unambiguous support from the company’s management.”
Butcher added: “I am very much of the belief that it is becoming psychologically damaging to the player. Never mind what it is doing to the team in their chance of putting consistent runs on the board against a really excellent bowling attack.”
Smooth as ever Foaksey 😎
🏴 #ENGvSA 🇿🇦 pic.twitter.com/1cVTgjqkl0
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) August 25, 2022
For the second test that England is playing against South Africa, they decided to use Ollie Robinson as a replacement for Matty Potts. Mark Butcher was aware of the adjustment, but he admitted that Potts has shown promise in his very little time playing for the Test team thus far. Butcher had a sarcastic remark to make about the hosts’ making a change in their bowling department rather than their batting department, and he said it with tongue firmly in cheek.
