marc71178 said:
Who was Crawley dropped for the most recent time - was it Key?
The teams for The Fifth Test in Australia and The First Test against Zimbabwe:
Trescothick
Vaughan
Butcher
Hussain
Key
Crawley
Stewart
Dawson
Caddick
Hoggard
Harmison
\
Trescothick
Vaughan
Butcher
Hussain
Key
Stewart
McGrath
Giles
Hoggard
Harmison
Anderson
Basically, the stupid thing was they wanted to bring back Flintoff and had the absurd idea that McGrath qualified as an all-rounder and suitable replacement for the injured Flintoff.
Now personally I don't agree that Flintoff should have been brought back and I certainly didn't agree that McGrath should have been remotely considered for Test cricket.
However, if someone was going to be dropped to do either, it should have been Key not Crawley as Crawley's performances in recent Tests were much the better.
As it was, Key was simply yet another example of the bad idea of picking players out of position. There was no place for him and they tried to manufacture one because he was perceived as "the future". Let me assure David, Geoff and Duncan, Robert Key in the middle-order most certainly is
not the future of English cricket if we want a good future.
It also transpired that Crawley had a very poor 2003 in First-Class cricket and couldn't complain at all about the lack of a recall. Fortunately, Thorpe was preferred and he made the most of it.
So in conclusion, the players preferred to Crawley were McGrath and Key, and Crawley had a much better case than both. He also had a better case than Flintoff, though of course not at the moment because of subsequent happenings.