Zak Crawley hailed Ben Stokes\u2019s \u201cphenomenal\u201d resurgence with the ball as the England captain took his first Test five-wicket haul in eight years, driving the hosts into control of the fourth Test in Manchester.<\/p>\n
Stokes finished with figures of five for 72 before Crawley struck 84 as England closed the second day on 225 for two, trailing India\u2019s first-innings total by 133 runs. The former has recovered from a hamstring tear, sustained against New Zealand late last year, to become his side\u2019s leading bowler this summer. He sits at the top of the series\u2019 wicket-taking charts with 16 at an average of 24.75.<\/p>\n
Asked if he saw similarities with Stokes now and the bowler from a few years ago, when South Africa were ripped apart<\/a> at Newlands in 2020 with three late match-winning wickets, Crawley replied: \u201cThere are so many similarities to that pace-wise.\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was bowling quickly back then and he\u2019s got that pace back now. And the way he gets that away movement from the right-handers, that zip, which is as much as anyone in the world. He gets that bounce and he\u2019s a proper wicket-taker, and he can make things happen. That was certainly the case when I first came into the side back then, and he seems to have got that back now, which is a phenomenal effort considering the injuries he\u2019s had. And, well, he\u2019s a little bit older now, so a phenomenal effort.\u201d<\/p>\n Crawley\u2019s opening stand of 166 with Ben Duckett on Thursday came after the pair had been involved in a tetchy exchange<\/a> with the Indian fielders on the third evening at Lord\u2019s, taking their time as Crawley faced one over before the close. India\u2019s captain, Shubman Gill, questioned whether England\u2019s behaviour had been \u201cin the spirit of the game\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI sit in my spot until the umpires go out, and I saw the umpires go out and I walked out. I wasn\u2019t aware that we were 90 seconds late, but fair enough,\u201d said Crawley.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always enjoyed that part of cricket, to be honest, especially when you\u2019re batting, and it\u2019s two of you against 11 and they\u2019re desperate to get you out and they\u2019re chirping you. Most of the time I\u2019d probably let it slide and then other times I feel like it\u2019s a good chance to put it back on them. And Lord\u2019s was, you know \u2013 I loved that little eight-minute passage. No one stepped over the line. I thought everyone was in good spirits. It was just competitive cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zak Crawley hailed Ben Stokes\u2019s \u201cphenomenal\u201d resurgence with the ball as the England captain took his first Test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-19331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}