da bet nacional： Mason Crane has only played a couple of T20 internationals and isn’t even first-choice at Hampshire… but his rapid rise means an Ashes debut is not out of the question

da dobrowin： George Dobell06-Nov-2017When Mason Crane flew to Sydney just over a year ago, his hopes extended to little more than performing well in Grade cricket and spending some time on the beach. But four wickets in his first game led to four five-fors (and three seven-fors) over the next few weeks and, by the end of the season, a place as the leading wicket-taker in New South Wales premier cricket.Suddenly, aged 20, he was selected for New South Wales’ Sheffield Shield side. That made him their first overseas player since Imran Khan in 1984-85, and their first English player since William Caffyn in the 1960s. He performed admirably, too, with five wickets in the match.”I never thought about the Shield,” he said at the time. “Never. When I was told I was actually playing, that was one of the proudest moments of my career. I can’t believe I’m here. What an honour.”Could history repeat itself? Not in terms of playing Shield cricket, but in terms of exceeding expectations. For when Crane was picked in England’s Ashes squad, it was presumed he was coming along for the experience. He would train with the main team, he would rub shoulders with them for several months and grow into the culture, but he wasn’t expected to play.An injury to Moeen Ali could have changed all that. Crane would almost certainly not have played in the two-day warm-up game in Perth had Moeen been fit – Joe Root had stated his intention to field as close as possible to the Test side with a maximum of 12 taking part – but, presented with an unexpected opportunity, he took his chance pretty well.While his figures of 2 for 75 from 17 overs were unexceptional, they did reinforce the impression that he won’t be overawed if the call comes. He bowled a couple of poor overs towards the end of the day and was hit for five fours in seven balls at one stage – but only when he was experimenting with bowling round the wicket. Generally, he was admirably tight, with good control of his stock legbreak and a calm head even when the batsmen went after him.That was the impression he gave in his first England opportunities, too. Playing just his second international game, the T20I in Cardiff in June, he had been thrashed for 18 by AB de Villiers from the first five balls of an over, mostly over the leg side. While other young spinners might have looked to fire in a quicker ball, Crane hoped de Villiers would take him on once more.

“I’ve got to be prepared to play in every game on this tour because I never know when I’ll be called upon”Mason Crane

“If he keeps doing that, he wins the game, and fast,” he told . “We need the wicket. He has taken me down, he’s on top of me: this is probably my last ball in the game, I might as well try to get him out. So I tossed it up, gave it plenty of revs so it had a chance of dipping hard and doing a bit, and hoped he’d go after it.”Indeed he did. But this time he was unable to connect quite so well and Alex Hales, on the square leg boundary, took a good catch. Just as the selectors noted Dawid Malan’s composure in that match, so they were impressed by Crane’s self-belief and maturity under a pressure.But the facts remain: he is 20; that was one international wicket taken in a T20 when a batsman was trying to slog him for six; he is not Hampshire’s first choice spinner – Liam Dawson’s all-round skills see him preferred in certain circumstances – and, if Moeen should be unavailable at some stage during the series, England might well still look towards the Lions, due out in little more than a week, for reinforcements.Perhaps the spectre of Simon Kerrigan continues to haunt England here. So damaging was the mauling Kerrigan, at the time a highly promising young spinner, took at The Oval in 2013 that it seems his career may never fully recover. England may be loath to exposing Crane to such a risk as the only spinner in the side. His long-term value is too great.Even Crane admitted he would not want to play “too early”. Talking to the at the time of his Shield debut he said: “I’d rather play Test cricket when I’m properly ready. The last thing I want is to play too early, not do great and then not get another look-in for a few years. I want the time to be right.”England are hardly overrun with options, though. Jack Leach is a highly competent bowler but he, too, lacks experience – only a year ago, his former captain at Somerset, Chris Rogers, suggested he might struggle temperamentally with the pressures of Test cricket – and he has almost no chance to acclimatise to the England environment or Australian conditions. Dawson, who isn’t on the Lions tour, might be another option but the suspicion lingers that, for all his attributes as a cricketer, he does not offer quite enough with bat or ball to succeed at Test level.Might Adil Rashid have been considered? He claimed 23 wickets, after all, in the series in India last year. But he has not played as the only spinner in any of his 10 Tests and, by the end of that India tour, it seemed England had lost patience with his lack of economy. He might, right now, still be a better bowler than Crane but it appears the selectors have moved on, with Rashid currently left to hone his T20 skills in the Bangladesh Premier League.They have long hankered after a legspinner, though. Since Chris Schofield was prematurely promoted in 2000, England have been drawn to legspinners as a man in debt is drawn to the bookies. They are the cricketing equivalent of ‘get rich quick’ schemes. But, as the experiences of Schofield, Rashid and Scott Borthwick (England’s spinner in Sydney at the end of the 2013-14 tour) have shown, it is desperately tough to offer the potency of a legspinner with the economy required to fit in with the English gameplan. It might be relevant, too, that most other nations have tended to play legspin rather better than England: what looks persuasive at county level can sometimes be exposed in Tests.Hampshire legspinner Mason Crane bowls on his Sheffield Shield debut for New South Wales•Getty ImagesEither way, Crane is likely to have another chance to impress this week. With Moeen still recovering from a side strain, Crane should play in the pink-ball match in Adelaide, enabling the team management to take an extended look at him.He, at least, feels he has improved sufficiently over the last few months to be in a position to take his chance.”I feel like if I was called upon tomorrow, I’d be confident to go out and play,” he said in Perth. “I’m very confident I could do a job. I’m just going to presume I’m playing in every game and if I do that is great. I’ve got to be prepared to play in every game on this tour because I never know when I’ll be called upon.”The Crane story also speaks volumes for the importance of free-to-air cricket. He is not from a cricket-loving family or a cricket-playing community and, had it not been for the 2005 Ashes on Channel 4, he might never have fallen for the game’s charms.As it was, he was captivated by the drama of that great series, and by the skills of Shane Warne in particular.”All I ever wanted to do was bowl,” he told . “Soon enough I’d accidentally bowled a googly and it goes from there, learning how to disguise it. Legspin is like that. It’s addictive. When you can turn it both ways, there’s always something new to try.”But it was another Australian legspinner, Stuart MacGill, who was to prove more of an influence. MacGill spotted Crane playing Grade cricket and started to work with him in the nets. In time, it was MacGill who presented him with his Baggy Blue cap ahead of his NSW debut.”He’s had a big influence on me,” Crane said. “He is as passionate as anyone I’ve seen when they talk about bowling and that came across even when I just spoke to him over coffee. We worked on a couple of technical things, but a lot of it was mental. He was an amazing help. We had a great relationship and he played a big part in me playing a Shield game. I’ll see him when we get to Sydney.”Whether Crane will have much time to chat remains to be seen. He has already come along way over the last 12 months and, through a combination of virtue and fortune, he has earned himself an outside chance of winning a cap before the series is finished.