IND vs ENG 2024: “It takes the spin out of plan” – Zak Crawley on England batters’ strategy to sweep and reverse sweep against Indian spinners

England opener Zak Crawley has shed light on visitors’ batters strategy of sweep and reverse sweep against Indian spinners. England’s batsmen made the most of the sweep and reverse sweep against India in the opening Test match at Hyderabad.

England’s vice-captain Ollie Pope played a magnificent knock of 196 runs in the second innings to help the tourists post 420 runs on the board. The visitors took a lead of 230 runs and were able to bundle out India for 202 to register a memorable win of 28 runs.

Pope played sweep and reverse sweep with aplomb and didn’t allow the spin trio of Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, and Axar Patel to settle in.

Meanwhile, Zak Crawley returned with scores of 20 and 31 in the opening Test and played a key role in giving a good start to England.

“I think sweeping and reverse sweeping when it’s spinning is a good option. It takes the spin out of plan,” Zak Crawley said in the press conference.

“I think the reverse sweep is more common for us, because there’s just less field in there. They always seem to have two men out on the leg side. If they had two men out on the other side, we’d probably play the sweep…the reverse sweep comes probably just as naturally to us as the normal sweep.”

Crawley added that Bazball comes naturally to a lot of England players as they love to take the attack to the opposition.

“I suppose it (‘Bazball’) comes quite naturally as a lot of our teams are playing more aggressively,” he said. “The mindset when I first came to England was to backlight or take your time and build a long innings and I didn’t think that came naturally to me and a few of the others. A lot of us play a bit better under this regime.”

The second Test match between India and England will be played at Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam from 2nd February.