Will any opener score any runs?
England, 2023: where openers come to die. “Go with low expectations,” says Usman Khawaja, who averages 19 from six Tests in England. “Toughest place in the world to bat.” Davey Warner, 10 knocks for 95 runs in 2019, may be inclined to agree. Ditto Zak Crawley, with his single fifty from 13 innings as an opener in England. Ben Duckett, the fourth of this year’s likely starters, has yet to experience the horror.
In 10 summers since Andrew Strauss retired, English openers not named Cook have managed seven Test centuries between them. Of all the post-Strauss pretenders, only Rory Burns averages in the thirties (30.32) across his whole career. Perhaps Crawley was not being entirely self-protective, not to say bored witless by the same old proddings, when he wondered out loud to a clutch of journalists last month if ‘centuries’, as the truest measure of a batter, were not such a useful metric after all. He is a moments player; and moments, insist McCullum and Stokes, win matches.