Revivalist Crawley hopes third time will be lucky

John Crawley was anxious about his place on the tour to Australia this winter. After his hundred in the win against India at Lord's he looked like a shoo-in, but later in the series his form began to desert him. He had been surprised to be recalled so soon to the England team after his dramatic departure from Old Trafford last winter. Now there was a danger that Crawley's revival would be cut short before it had matured.

He recalls his mood before the squad was announced last Tuesday: "I was extremely hopeful and pretty desperate to get on the trip," he says.

His summer had begun to look pear-shaped at Headingley when he mislaid the freedom that had made his batting so secure and attractive earlier in the summer; in the last three Tests he scored only 73 in five innings. "The freedom deserted me for some reason," he says. He was out in the first innings at Headingley to a shot he himself describes as mindless: "Something failed to click and I was bitterly disappointed to let the team down."

He wondered whether his defensive and unsuccessful innings of 26 at The Oval was a consequence of that failure in Headingley.

But he was picked as the sixth batsman, and when the county season ends he will be in the indoor school at the Rose Bowl with the bowling machine switched on to send down fast balls just outside off stump that move away. Just like Glenn McGrath. This is his third tour of Australia. He did not leave his mark on his previous visits and he wants this one to work.

The return of Graham Thorpe casts a shadow. Crawley's place at No 5 will certainly not be guaranteed. He may have to wait until someone is injured – although the law of averages as applied to England batsmen suggests that he will get a chance sooner or later.

He is conscious of the personal challenge presented by Australia's pace attack. "In Australian conditions it is just a case of picking which shots to play and which balls to leave alone," he says. That's the theory; the practice often proves more difficult.

But Crawley is in an optimistic frame of mind. He thinks Australia may be vulnerable this winter: "This side represents our best chance of coming away with the spoils over the past few years. New Zealand showed the virtue of playing positive cricket against them last winter. You can take the game to them – without being reckless."

Nasser Hussain has already talked to the England dressing-room about the way they will play this winter. He tells them to think about the way they are going to play in those conditions. Although the evidence is thin, it sounds as if the England captain is planning to ditch the attritional tactics he deployed against India and go on the attack.

We have got over the surprise by now, but anyone who said at the start of the season that Crawley would be a participant in the squad discussion of tactics for the Ashes tour would have been considered a visionary or a fool.

When he took the Lanc- ashire captaincy in 1999 the assumption was that Crawley had settled for county cricket. He was 28 and his England career had spluttered along. He had scored 72 in Sydney in 1995 on his Ashes debut, but by the winter tour of Australia in 1998-99 he had played in only 29 Tests in six years, averaging 31.64. He was great in county cricket (his first-class average is 47.50) but the promise of his early years seemed to have ebbed away.

Last winter was spent in an agonising and expensive retreat from Old Trafford. But the motive was not to play out the rest of his career in a safe billet at the Rose Bowl.

Earlier this summer he explained: "I could not stay at Lancashire because my cricket would be affected. I needed to be with a team I believed in, because I wanted to be playing with passion and heart. A future England career was at the heart of it. Nothing burns more strongly."

His recall, after he had opened his account at Hampshire with 272 against Kent in the first county match of the season, was met with some derision. The criticism did not worry him.

"Anyone with a modicum of intelligence could see that a team like Australia left out people such as Hayden, Langer and Martyn to work on their game." (He is a Cambridge graduate with a 2:1 degree.)

He knows the Australian players because he has had plenty of opportunities to watch them play. The only other veterans of 1994-95 are Alec Stewart, Darren Gough, and Thorpe. Crawley got two good scores in the seventies and two ducks in that series. When he returned home he decided it was time to start a fitness regime; he has been loyal to it ever since.

The second trip was no fun. He was beaten up during a warm-up game in Cairns. "I think it upset me more than I thought. I was really enjoying that tour, but I became a little bit introverted having been landed on the deck." He did not play in a single Test.

He is five years older now. His blond hair is thinning. He has the long, lean face of a fit man, the creased forehead of a man who knows grief, a prominent nose and big blue eyes. If he's right about the vulnerability of the Australians, those eyes might be smiling after the Fifth Test in Sydney next January. If.