Morose Zak Crawley all but concedes defat ahead of Day 5 as he says England are “staring down the barrel” of defeat.
A morose Zak Crawley has more or less admitted that his side has not much hope to register a victory in the third test at Adelaide.
Crawley led the score with 85 on the fourth day, but he was dismissed by Alex Carey off Nathan Lyon’s bowling late in the evening session. As a result, Australia will need to take four more wickets on day five in order to lead 3-0 with two games remaining and secure a home Ashes victory as soon as possible for the fourth consecutive series.
England came to Australia with great expectations of improving their terrible recent record, but they were thoroughly outplayed. They have essentially given up on their ultra-attacking strategy with the bat; throughout the series, they have scored 3.79 runs per over compared to Australia’s 4.34 runs per over, which Crawley attributed to the disparity in skill between the two teams.
“They’ve bowled very well, and haven’t given us a lot,” Crawley said. “You look at [Scott] Boland, just for one of them. He just very rarely misses, and so it’s hard to play that way that we have in the past, perhaps.
“They have to get credit for that there and they set good fields, in fairness to them. It’s just an attritional style of cricket over here, and they don’t allow it. It’s not as easy to score quickly out here.”
Crawley described Australia’s attack as “phenomenal”, telling TNT Sports: “They’re the best bowling attack that I’ve played against, for sure – especially in these conditions, when it was spinning like that for [Nathan] Lyon. They don’t give you anything, they make the ball move, and they’re relentless.
“We knew that coming in. We knew we had to be at our best, and unfortunately, we’ve been just short of that. But in fairness to them, they’ve been phenomenal for the last three games.”