The Ashes 2025-26: Zak Crawley lacks fitness – so why do they keep selecting him?

But the truth is that the batter England chose specifically for this Ashes series started with two ducks.

Things couldn’t get worse, literally.

Having invested so much, dropping Crawley after one Test and pitching for a debut from the Lions or asking Will Jacks or Jacob Bethell to open for the first time would be an even stranger move.

However, there are worrying trends that Crawley must correct, most notably the sharp decline in his record against the pace.

Crawley’s preference for pace was reflected in his career average of 48.25 off deliveries at over 87mph at the start of this summer’s drawn series against India.

Since then he has averaged six against such deliveries, with five dismissals in 54 balls at the hands of Starc, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna.

But speed wasn’t necessarily Crawley’s problem in Perth.

If anything he was an early starter when Stark caught him and threw him in the second half.

Instead, what links the two failures is the fact that they were both pushers again – the first aggressive push that reached the slips before a more experimental push.

With pitches in Australia becoming ever tougher and the kookaburra’s tailoring more refined, driving is fraught with much greater risk these days.

Crawley averages 55.5 with the home shot but just 8.25 in Australia, with four dismissals in eight innings. His strength, as often happens, is also a weakness.

It leaves, despite all the talk and hope, Crawley’s average in Australia at 20.75.

England will give him time and he will have few alternatives.

But the results do not support the theory.