MANCHESTER: Former South Africa captain Graeme Smith stated that England opener Zak Crawley is looking like a batter who has a lack of understanding of his own game as well as strengths and weaknesses.
Crawley has been going through a prolonged form slump at the top, with the 24-year-old opener managing just nine and 13 against the Proteas in the opening Test at Lord's, which England lost by an innings and 12 runs inside three days. The right-handed batter is yet to score a half-century for his country from 10 innings this summer, scoring just 164 runs at an average of 16.40 in five Tests.
"I mean, if I take myself as example, if people asked me, 'Okay, you weren't the best-looking batter in the world, but what were your strengths?'... I understood my strengths and my weaknesses. If I faced Jimmy, I knew that I would bat on two legs (middle and leg) as the biggest danger to me was LBW. So I had a mindset of I was going to take him on. Broady? Maybe with the extra bounce I'd want to command off stump a lot more.
"And in my innings I knew that cover driving for me, for example, was something I didn't really want to do early on in my innings. I would look to cut, I'd look to pull. If you were in my channel, I would look to hit the ball back at you or leg side until I was in. But when I look at Crawley play, it doesn't look like he's got a mindset of understanding his own game. He just plays," said Smith. IANS
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