India get a thrilling dose of the Zak Crawley experience

How do you explain a cricketer like Zak Crawley? He is an outlier, a player who continues to defy conventional wisdom. No man in Test history has opened the batting so often (93 innings) and averaged so little (31.06), yet he is one half of England's most prolific opening partnership for a decade and his place has rarely been so secure.

This Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series has been a trademark Crawley series: he has averaged 34.50, a tick over his career mark, and has thrilled and frustrated in equal measure. He has made three substantial contributions in eight innings, yet none of England's first-choice top seven have scored fewer runs. He remains England's enigma, his career a web of contradictions.

Crawley was England's top-scorer in their first innings at The Oval and personified their approach, jumping at the chance to dominate India's seamers. Before his dismissal, Crawley hit one in every four balls that he faced for four, maintaining a strike rate well above 100. He scored 56 of his 64 runs in boundaries, reasoning that on a seaming pitch, attack was the best form of defence.

It was the perfect attack for him to face. Crawley has the peculiar distinction of getting better when the bowling gets faster, reasoning that he is at his best when he has no time to think and lets his instincts take over. Facing seam, he averages 43.31 against balls at 84mph/135kph or quicker, compared to just 27.31 against those below.

But that is precisely why England's management have retained him for so long. He has missed only three of their 47 Tests since Boxing Day 2021 - and those through injury - despite two long ruts in form. That he was their top-scorer in two consecutive marquee series (Australia 2023 and India 2024) vindicated the sense that he is better equipped against the best than the rest.

Crawley is encapsulated by the fact he has only been dismissed once in 119 balls in this series against Jasprit Bumrah, but twice in the seven balls he has faced from Nitish Kumar Reddy. India's rebalancing at The Oval pitted him against three fast-medium bowlers; Crawley may have been the only England batter to breathe a sigh of relief when India left Shardul Thakur out.

If he rode his luck at times - inside-edging Prasidh Krishna past leg stump, flashing him over the slips - he made good use of it. Crawley hit two perfect straight drives - one mid-off, the other mid-on - in three balls from Mohammed Siraj, and made a capacity crowd collectively purr when he spanked Prasidh through cover point.

His partnership with Ben Duckett was worth 92 in just 12.5 overs, and the collapse that followed vindicated their ultra-positive approach. Crawley and Duckett refused to let India's seamers settle, disrupting their lengths by charging down the pitch and - in Duckett's case - playing conventional and reverse-scoops. On a green seamer, it was defence that proved fatal.

It was evident from Shubman Gill's reactions at third slip - and, soon enough, mid-off - that England's openers put India under severe pressure. After India folded for 224, Gill was caught between stools: he had no runs to play with, yet knew that he needed to break the partnership as soon as possible. Duckett's fluffed reverse came as a huge relief.

By that stage, Duckett and Crawley had reached a rare milestone, bringing up 500 runs for the series as an opening pair. It was the first time any opening pair had done so since 2015, and they were the first England openers to since Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook in the 2010-11 Ashes. No wonder Crawley, for all his flaws, is considered undroppable.

It is not hard to work out why they have been such a success together. "One's right-handed and a giant, the other is left-handed and isn't," Ben Stokes wrote in his programme notes for the Edgbaston Test. "When they get going, it can be a nightmare for bowlers trying to find rhythm." A good ball to one is a freebie to the other, and vice-versa.

Crawley is clearly frustrating to play against, and not only for his free-wheeling batting. He thrived on his role as pantomime villain at Lord's and was on the wind-up again last week in Manchester, telling India's batters their decision to bat on for centuries was "embarrassing" - seemingly oblivious that he was England's only specialist batter without one in the series.

His spliced pull to square midwicket felt oddly apt: he has always been a player of style over substance, and an anticlimactic dismissal was perfectly in keeping with the Crawley experience. On the flipside, for all that it looked like a missed chance to define the match, Crawley's 64 was the highest score across both teams' first innings.

The Oval suits Crawley: it is one of two venues (along with the Utilita Bowl) where he has passed 50 three times in Test cricket, and is the English ground where he has scored the fastest. England have averaged fewer runs per wicket at The Oval than any other home venue in the last four summers; it is utterly in keeping with Crawley's eccentricities that he has thrived there.