Dunno if you watch the Wisden podcast, but Ben Jones from Cricviz was on a couple of weeks ago and pretty much said that all their modelling suggested Zak Crawley was never going to make a good test cricketer. But, he also agreed, he'll probably play.
I've not caught much of the Wisden podcast, but honestly that pretty much comes as no surprise.
I do however think Zak Crawley is a fascinating player because he absolutely is capable of pulling a stunning Test innings out of his arse. Not like Brendon Kuruppu absolutely steadfastly refusing to get out and earning runs on his way, but like a prime M*chael V*ughan or Damien Martyn where he'll put together a hundred of such obvious quality that everyone is convinced that he has the pedigree.
But the rest of the time he's got all the technique and temperament of prime Hannan Sarkar - as shown when over the course of a year he averaged 10.
He's like the saying "you've got to be good enough to be truly bad" got moulded into 6'5" of batting kit. The idea behind that saying is that if you're truly not good enough for a role then you'll never be given it for long enough to prove just how bad you could be at it. But to be truly awful, awful enough to play a year of Test cricket while averaging 10, you need to first prove you might be good enough to persevere with.
However, there is one person who I can imagine getting the best out of him. After his first 40 Tests, sometimes batting as low as eight or nine, Brendon McCullum averaged just 31.80 and had only two centuries. Without any fundamental change to his technique, McCullum turned that into a last 20 Tests that yielded an average of over 50 with five centuries (scores of 224, 302, 202, 195 and 145 respectively), often batting in the top three.
If anyone can get a Test batter out of Zak Crawley, it's the guy England just hired to coach him.
