{"id":581215,"date":"2026-04-02T18:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/581215\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T18:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:30:15","slug":"englands-zak-crawley-and-jamie-smith-set-to-play-in-county-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/581215\/","title":{"rendered":"England&#8217;s Zak Crawley and Jamie Smith set to play in County Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England Test players Zak Crawley and Jamie Smith are set to be involved in Friday&#8217;s opening round of the 2026 County Championship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Opening batter Crawley has been named in Kent&#8217;s squad for their Division Two game at Durham, while Smith is in the Surrey party visiting Warwickshire at Edgbaston in the Division One match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Both played all five Tests in the Ashes during the winter which Australia won 4-1. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Crawley made two fifties and averaged just 27.30 at the top of the order, while Smith in his role as wicketkeeper averaged only 23.44 with the bat and struggled with the gloves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ollie Pope, who was dropped from his role as number three halfway through the series, is also part of that Surrey squad alongside Smith, as they all look to make a strong individual start to the domestic season.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Seam bowler Matt Potts, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/c5ywr3yrprlo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">who played in the final Test of the series in Sydney,<\/a> is in the Durham squad for that Kent game and likely to bowl at England team-mate Crawley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England Test players Zak Crawley and Jamie Smith are set to be involved in Friday&#8217;s opening round of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-581215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581215","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=581215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}