Bazball really winds them up: Zak Crawley ahead of Ashes showdown

“Bazball really winds them up, doesn’t it?” Crawley was quoted as saying by The Times. “Which is great. If they get wound up, then that’s better for us. All that stuff after the last series, talking about ‘the moral Ashes’ after what happened with Jonny Bairstow [getting stumped by Alex Carey at Lord’s], that was just a consequence of us drawing the series. In my eyes, if they’d won, they would never have said it, so it’s a compliment that they felt the need.”

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While England have since moved on from the wicketkeeper, Crawley said he would take a few lessons he has learnt from Bairstow to Australia. “Jonny Bairstow always said, ‘You’ve got to stick your chest out against Australia’. And I think he’s right, even if that’s not your personality, you’ve got to show them,” Crawley said. “They’re very competitive, they’re very good at cricket, and they’re in your face and want to get on top of you.

“So it’s important to stand up for yourself and I feel like we showed in the India series we’re not just nice guys who are going to roll over. That’ll be important in Australia, to front up at times. And I like that side of it,” he added.

Since winning the Ashes Down Under in 2010/11 by a 3-1 margin, England haven’t been able to come anywhere close to winning a Test in Australia. While they were whitewashed in 2013/14, they ended up losing the next two with a 4-0 margin. However, this time it is expected to be a closely fought context with Joe Root also sounding optimistic.

“It definitely does, if I am being brutally honest,” Root said recently when asked if this feels like his best opportunity to win the urn away from home. “The thing that I’m most excited about is going there with a completely different approach as a playing group. We’re going to be able to hit them with something quite different in terms of our bowling attack, and the opportunity to potentially play three or four bowlers that bowl 90mph-plus for a sustained period of time,” he said recently.

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