Pressure mounts on Ange as potential replacement identified<\/a><\/p>\nCrawley says it’s a word they don’t use.<\/p>\n
“I think it begins and ends with the team selection, really,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They pick the players they think can play aggressively, and then we all go at our natural tempo, and they trust us to execute it.”<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/91d315500d23937c8cbaf7fd21e6966bbba5b783.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Zak Crawley, Harry Brook and Ben Stokes. \u00a0Visionhaus\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
But then the talk turns to Australia, and the Aussie relationship with the word ‘Bazball’.<\/p>\n
“I know, ‘Bazball’ really winds them up, doesn’t it?” he said.<\/p>\n
“Which is great. If they get wound up, then that’s better for us.<\/p>\n
“All that stuff after the last series, talking about ‘the moral Ashes’ after what happened with Jonny Bairstow [being stumped controversially], 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.”<\/p>\n
The moral comment is interesting, considering it was England batter Harry Brook who said ahead of the final Test at The Oval in 2023 that a win would be a “moral victory”.<\/p>\n
England did win, and the series was tied 2-2, but Australia retained the urn. <\/p>\n
Pat Cummins saw the funny side of it after the series when he said 2-2 was “a thumping, morally.”<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Crawley’s comments provide a juicy build-up to a series just over a month away.<\/p>\n
“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,” he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“And I like that side of it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, a candid interview with Zak Crawley dropped in The Times. There was talk of his upbringing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-209739","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\/209739","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=209739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}