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Former English cricketer Geoffrey Boycott has strongly criticised the England team management for continuously backing opener Zak Crawley and bowler Chris Woakes. Boycott is unsure of Crawley's improvement and feels Woakes is past his peak performance. His scathing remarks followed England's heavy 336-run defeat at the hands of India at Edgbaston. This victory was India's largest-ever win in an overseas Test and their first at this particular venue, enabling them to level the five-match series.
Goeffrey Boycott blasts Zak Crawley-Chris Woakes after flop show in 2nd Test vs India
After the completion of two Test matches, encompassing four innings, Crawley has managed to score a mere 88 runs, with his highest score being just 65. Meanwhile, Woakes has been notably ineffective among the English pace bowlers in the series, having taken only three wickets so far. He went wicketless in both of India's innings during the Leeds Test and the second innings at Edgbaston. In contrast, the young bowler Josh Tongue has emerged as the leading wicket-taker in the series with an impressive tally of 11 wickets.
“I don’t think he can change or get better. Batting is in the head, and the brain dictates how you approach batting: what shots you attempt, what balls you leave. His faults in technique and thinking are ingrained. A leopard doesn’t change his spots, or maybe Zak does not want to change. He should be approaching his best years, but in 56 Tests he has learned nothing. One sparkling innings and numerous failures, with an average of 31, is not good enough,” Boycott wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
In the first Test match, Zak Crawley was dismissed by the Indian pace bowling duo of Jasprit Bumrah and Prasidh Krishna. However, in the subsequent second Test, it was Mohammed Siraj who claimed his wicket. Reflecting on Crawley's batting technique, Geoffrey Boycott observed a potential shift in his approach during the first Test.
“At Headingley, he played straight with the full face of the bat, left wide balls and let the ball come to him so he could keep his bat close to his pad,” he added.
“The two shots he got out to at Edgbaston [in the second Test] were awful. In the first innings, his feet got stuck in cement—neither forward nor back—and then he wafted at the ball to be caught at slip. Second innings, he batted on off stump and drove at a well-pitched-up ball two feet wide. He did not need to play it. He was on nought, had been fielding for five sessions, and his legs were tired, so should have been thinking about surviving that evening,” Boycott further stated.
The 84-year-old legend, who amassed 8,114 runs at an impressive average of 47.72, also directed his criticism towards Woakes and said that the star speedster's pace is dropping.
“It is counter-productive to keep the same guys in the team when they are past their sell-by date or not doing enough. Look at Chris Woakes. His pace is dropping, as you would expect as a seamer gets older. He has never been a wicket-taker abroad, where his record is poor. He is good—or has been good—on English pitches, and his batting has been handy at times as a safety valve when others have failed. His job should not be to shore up bad batting. Batsmen are there to score runs, and bowlers need to take wickets,” Boycott concluded.
It will be interesting to see whether England would continue to back the duo or end up dropping them in the upcoming third Test against India which is slated to start from July 10 at Lord's.
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