Let’s go back to 2019, and to an England Test tour of New Zealand where a new generation of players didn’t so much emerge as was forced into being by Ed Smith’s penchant for a showy pick.
Seven players under the age of 24 were included, and the two that remain have, for better and worse, defined England’s Test team over the first half of the 2020s. Ollie Pope made his maiden half-century and Zak Crawley his debut in the second Test of that series. Now, back in England after another Test tour of New Zealand, their stories meet again.
It’s fitting for two players whose England journeys have been so intertwined that the pair have started the 2025 County Championship season in almost identical fashion. For each, a half-century in their fourth innings of the season went some way to wiping off sub-fifty scores, and both will hope the restorative effects will bear fruit over the coming weeks.
For Pope, it came in familiar surrounds at The Oval, with Surrey having secured an unexpected lead, but nonetheless translated a position of strength into one of dominance. For Crawley, dropped early, aggression was the only option, hitting his way back into rhythm and laying the platform for a chase in excess of 300 which Kent made to look laughably easy. Soon the jokes began to roll in, that Crawley had done enough to book his place in the England side for the next decade. But this time feels different. For once, Crawley might need not just a score to show he’s back in nick, but a run of scores to show he’s the best option out there. For Pope, there was a feeling at the end of England’s last Test tour that he might be on the way out no matter what he did between then and their next game.
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Let’s backtrack to then to remind ourselves where we left off. Pope was actually good in that 2-1 series win, forced to take the gloves but still the second-most important batter, after Harry Brook, in each of England’s two victories. But by the end of the tour, all anyone could talk about was Jacob Bethell, who passed fifty in each of England’s second innings, including the second fastest debut half-century in Test history. In the second Test, he was four runs away from being England’s youngest Test centurion since Denis Compton. England like him a lot, and you can see why. Bethell’s stint at the IPL complicates matters, denying him the chance to make a maiden first-class century before England’s Test calendar resumes, but when he is back available, he will play. Ditto Jamie Smith, back from paternity leave after slotting seamlessly into England’s Test gauntlets both at home and in Pakistan.
But this isn’t simply an eight into seven dilemma. England suddenly find their Test batting cupboard stocked full. The selection philosophy has always been to pick the seven they see as the most talented, the most likely to succeed right now, with little thought given to recent runs or if a player ‘deserves’ to be dropped. Now there are several with cases to be considered in that number.
There’s Ben McKinney, a Lions centurion over the winter and deemed as Test-ready already by Graeme Swann, one of his coaches on that tour. There’s Tom Banton, who backed up an England white-ball recall over the winter with a triple hundred in Somerset’s opening game of the season. There’s Jordan Cox, who would have made his Test debut over the winter were it not for a broken thumb and made his fifth hundred in 13 games for Essex since moving from Kent in their opening game against Surrey. There’s James Rew, with nine first-class hundreds having turned 21 earlier this year, who has shown his range with a supporting hand of 152 to Banton and then a lone, unbeaten hand of 80 from 83 against Sussex.
England have rarely had such depth, and certainly not during the Crawley-Pope years. You only have to look at what has happened when each has been left out of the side for this to become clear. Crawley, dropped once in the middle of 2021 after averaging 11 across England’s first seven Tests of the year, was replaced by Haseeb Hameed, who began the season having made one hundred in five years. Crawley was recalled by the end of the year. Pope, meanwhile, has been more in and out, but has never spent more than three consecutive Tests on the bench since that 2019 New Zealand tour.
More than that, however, there’s a sense of that inevitable sporting truth: time is the one opponent who can never be beaten. Crawley and Pope are both now 27, theoretically entering their primes, but already with over 100 Tests’ experience between them. No longer are they players of promise, riding in the slipstream of more established teammates. As the McCullum-Stokes era reaches a fine point with ten Tests against India and Australia, so too do the stories of these intertwined players, each capable of feats of extraordinary brilliance but neither, as yet, tying it together into a career of proper substance.
At a crucial point in their careers, Crawley and Pope must show they're still the best options out there
England's once prodigal sons must show they're still punt worth backing
Ordinarily, this would be no time to rip up the formula, with three years of planning building to this point. But the current England management are gamblers, and won’t be afraid of moving their chips around if they spy a better option. For Crawley and Pope, the time is now to show they are the punts worth backing.
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