Webmaster talks to John Crawley on the early season and his England disapointment.

John Crawley Hampshire captain

Webmaster - "John, we are six weeks into the season, your first as Hampshire captain, how has it been going".

Crawley - "On the whole the results will say we have not had a particularly good start to the season, two real factors I think are, we have been disrupted quite heavily in the Championship by the rain, which hasn't helped anything. We have actually when we have got on the field have gone out there and played good stuff, and have been competitive in the matches we have played in, with certainly at certain times chances of winning each of them. That's one outstanding thing, the others were almost freak wins by Middlesex in the National League and Sussex in the Cheltenham & Gloucester, which were games we had already won and they took the games away from us, that early on in the season is not very easy to come back from. The only game we have played poorly in, I think was the National League game against Lancashire at Old Trafford. Apart from that everything has been going reasonably well. There is obviously room for improvement, but I think on the whole there has been not as much doom and gloom as the results might say.

Webmaster - "Scotland coming up at the weekend, then Durham in the Championship, Sunday must have been a big relief"'

Crawley - "Yes, I think we played really well, it was great day for Derek (Kenway), he played really well, he has been struggling for runs, and struggling for form, as an opening batsmen a loss of form is not particularly easy to deal with. The two knocks he played were brilliant really for us and for him. They were two different types of pitches. The one on Sunday was I think, the best pitch I've played on here at The Rose Bowl, and it was great for us to play so well on that sort of surface".

Webmaster - "What about your own form this season?"

Crawley - "In and out really, obviously I had a good start to the Championship season, and should have gone on really in one of those 4/5 half centuries, I should have gone on to make a big score in one if not two. The One Day stuff started slowly, which is disappointing.

Webmaster - "You may not want to talk about it, but, left out of the England squad, a big disappointment"?

Crawley - O a hugh disappointment, I think I have not spoken openly about it to many people. I am still pretty bewildered and amazed by the whole thing to be honest, I did have chats with some of the selectors beforehand and they gave me the odd reason. Nobody has spoken to me since the selection has been made, but the reasons that they were putting forward before hand were not really satisfactory from my point of view. In the last eight test matches since coming back into the side, I played a big part in two of England's wins at the time, helped to save the game against Sri Lanka at Lord's, and averaged 47 plus with the bat. OK, I didn't really light up any bonfires in the winter, but there were a lot of other batsmen who didn't also, and I can take a lot of credit from the fact that I can look myself in the mirror and tell myself in all honesty that I have fought as hard as I possibly could for England. To be dropped after that for not really any reason as far as I can see, is by far and away the most utterly disappointing thing that has happened to me in my cricket career".

Webmaster - "Are you still optimistic that you could get back?

Crawley - "Well certainly, the ball is in my court to do so, I'm not sure because as the season goes on and obviously the press is very powerful in this country, and they will be clamouring for more and more young faces in the side, so the pressure will be on the selectors to go that way I think they probably will, whether it is right or wrong they are under pressure, so that is the way it will go, so I will have to perform. I just really have to score double hundreds on more than one occasion.

Webmaster - "OK, John that super, thank you very much.