ENG vs NZ | Zak Crawley’s scrambled brain is resulting in his own undoing, opines Nasser Hussain

After posting scores of 2 and 2 at Lord’s, young Zak Crawley entered Day 1 of Edgbaston under significant pressure, but he was set the perfect platform by the openers, who’d batted 30 overs. However, despite the odds being in his favour, the 23-year-old perished after just four balls, for a duck, inexplicably throwing his hands at a wide one from Neil Wagner which could have been left alone. The dismissal took Crawley’s average for the year to a mere 9.63, and the youngster now finds himself as a likely candidate to be axed for the five-Test series against India.

“It’s the thing that is most easy to forget when you finish playing the game – how scrambled you get where you are out of nick and scratching around for runs. And Crawley’s dismissal to Neil Wagner here at Edgbaston came with the shot of a man who is struggling mentally rather than technically.”

“Crawley will certainly be under pressure in the second innings here, with Ben Stokes due to come back and someone having to give way in the series against India.

“And the more desperate you get for runs the more you can become tense and go searching for the ball. Especially when the game and the next innings are so important.”

“All he needed to do was watch Dan Lawrence, who also played a bad shot at Lord’s, to realise that as pressure eases those hands become softer on the bat and those mental and technical issues can disappear.

“So what Crawley has to do now is study footage of that 267 at the Ageas Bowl, try to blank those three dismissals out of his mind and get that brain unscrambled. He has to be as natural as possible but it’s not easy to change in the middle of a Test,” Hussain said.