Crawley and Earl: The schoolmates who have risen to the top together. An interview with the two OTs in the Sunday Times (April 2020)

The cricket ball is hit hard and fast by his friend and catches the schoolboy flush on the face before he can turn away. The result is a fractured cheekbone. This kind of incident can test a friendship between 12-year-olds but the injured party brings it up with a grin rather than a grimace when we talk about it ten years later. “That sums up his batting — powerful,” Zak Crawley says of Ben Earl. “By the time of our last year [aged 13] at prep school, he was bowling pretty quick too.”

The paths of Crawley and Earl have intertwined for more than 17 years, starting in 2002 when they entered the reception group at New Beacon school in Kent. Born 15 miles and four weeks apart in 1998, their England debuts came within ten weeks of one another. It was Crawley who made the breakthrough in cricket, appearing in the second Test against New Zealand last November. Earl, the older of the two, had to wait until February 8 when he came on as a second-half substitute in a Six Nations rugby match at Murrayfield.

Today, they sit within a few miles of one another. Both have retreated to their family homes for lockdown — Crawley near Sevenoaks, Kent, Earl in Westerham on the Kent-Surrey border. Now they are reconnected through Zoom.

The 6ft 10in former Lion Martin Bayfield has launched many an after-dinner routine with the line, “rugby’s f***ing great when you’re 13 and this tall”, and Earl enjoyed a similar advantage. He cheerfully admits he was the same height (6ft 3in) at 14 as he is now. This had its drawbacks, though, as Crawley isn’t slow to point out. “Ben wasn’t allowed desserts at school because they were worried he wouldn’t make the weight to play in the sevens tournaments,” he says.

Laying off the apple crumble offered no guarantee of coming in under the limit, however. “I remember not eating two days before one competition,” Earl says. “When you got there, they’d always get the big lads off the bus and say, ‘Come on, we need to weigh you.’ I think I drank some water on the way which tipped me over and I couldn’t play.”

From New Beacon, the pair progressed to the nearby Tonbridge School where fees, if you have the spare change, will set you back just over £42,000 a year, and alumni include the novelist EM Forster, the actor Dan Stevens and the pop group Keane. More pertinently for Crawley, the school has also produced two England cricket captains, Colin and Chris Cowdrey, and the national selector for the senior men’s team, Ed Smith.

Smith made his debut for the first XI as a 16-year-old, a year older than Crawley. Earl, too, played “above” his years, making the same team at 16. By then he had already represented the school’s first XV.

“It was a real learning curve,” he says of that experience, “because for so long you’ve been bigger than everyone, then you get to your first game — I think it was Epsom away — and you realise you’re average build, if not on the small side.

“Kyle Sinckler had left Epsom a year before, which was probably a blessing for us.”

Earl might have been lucky to avoid facing one of his future England team-mates but the same cannot be said of Crawley, who had periodic run-ins with the Curran brothers, then at Wellington, during his teenage years.

“There was one school match when Tom Curran was getting stuck into my batting partner, Chris, sledging him the whole time. Chris had no idea who he was but kept coming back for more: ‘You think you’re so tough, why don’t you come on for a bowl?’

“I can’t bowl,” Curran said.

“You’re just too scared, that’s why.”

“Tom had been told by Surrey not to bowl to avoid injury but he was getting so revved up I thought he was going to ignore that and bring himself on.

“During the changeover, I said to Chris: ‘You do know this guy’s playing for England Under-19, bowling over 80mph.’ The look on his face was priceless.”

Earl says he can boast not only Crawley and Sam Curran among his bowling scalps but also Dom Sibley, the England opener, as well as a former England player. “Sarries have a charity match every summer. I got Owais Shah out last summer. . .”

The pair sat their A levels in 2016. In days gone by, both would have headed to university and kept a foot in the amateur ranks. That is not the way now in either sport. Earl was signed by Saracens, making his debut later that year, but was able to complete a degree in comparative literature at the same time as playing professionally — he graduated from Queen Mary University, London, last July. Crawley made his first-class debut against West Indies in 2017.

When did either feel they might be ready to shake off the dreaded “impostor syndrome”?

“It was the hundred last year against Notts at Tunbridge Wells on a slightly tricky wicket,” Crawley says. “This was the day I put my name on the map for England. Before that, I had never thought I was anywhere near that. The funny thing is the week before I got out twice in one day against Somerset and never felt in worse nick.”

Earl continues: “I never had anything like that until this season. I scored a couple of tries against Leicester last October and picked up a couple of man-of-the-matches. You think to yourself, this is becoming a bit easier now, maybe I’m ready to go to the next level.

“When you start getting talked about in an international context, everyone says, ‘That’s very humbling but I don’t really listen to that. . .’ Actually, it’s only natural that you do listen and that’s a good thing because it forces you to take it seriously and expect more of yourself.”

Crawley agrees: “When you’re talked about as a potential England player, it makes things clearer. Knowing that I was so close and needed a couple more good performances to get there made me work harder. I didn’t get carried away but it gave me something clear to aim for.”

Crawley headed out to New Zealand last autumn as the junior member of the squad. His opportunity came by chance. “The day before the second Test, I was next to Jos Buttler in the gym and he just went over, did his back in. I was looking round and thinking, I’m the only batsman left, there’s no one else . . . so I got very nervous. I was lucky if I got more than 45 minutes’ sleep that night. Of course, I had to wait until the third day to bat and only made one. . .”

Earl’s call-up to the Six Nations squad came at the end of January: “I had been out for a few drinks with some mates. We were having dinner when I saw on my phone that I had been added to a WhatsApp group with 45 people in it. This was a Sunday. We were all given instructions to meet at Pennyhill Park [the England training base] on the Wednesday. That was it. There was no magic phone call from Eddie [Jones, the England coach].”

After failing to make the 23-man squad for the opening Six Nations game in Paris, where England lost, he didn’t hold out much hope when he was back in camp for the fixture away to Scotland the next weekend. “The way it works is that all 34 train together Monday to Wednesday, then you go for dinner on Wednesday night and ten or 11 people have left,” he says. “You’re secretly looking around, trying to work out who has left and how that affects your chances. Even if you survive, there’s still a chance you can get picked as a travelling reserve, the rugby equivalent of serving the drinks.

“At this point, I’ve got my mum saying she’s looking into flights to Edinburgh, and my mates asking if I can get tickets, but it wasn’t till the day before the game that I was told I was in the matchday 23.

“I was on for 15 minutes for what must have been the worst game in the worst conditions I’ve ever experienced [Storm Ciara was moving through]. In the hour or so before, I was thinking, ‘Why would you put a debutant on in such a gritty game in such conditions?’ Once I was on, it was, right, we’ve got a game to play. It went very fast.”

Crawley caught the match in the gym on the England Lions tour in Australia. “I texted Ben to say ‘I’ve just seen you on TV.’ I was supposed to be doing a session with the strength and conditioning coach, who was getting annoyed because I wasn’t concentrating.”

A few weeks earlier, when Crawley went out to bat against South Africa, the roles were reversed. “I was doing a newspaper interview and I said, ‘Can we just put this on hold for ten minutes so I can watch the start of his innings?’ I was so nervous for him. Did you get many?”

“No,” Crawley answers ruefully. “Vernon Philander was all over me like a rash.” The South African dismissed him for four off 15 balls.

For two young men who had just got their first taste of international sport, lockdown must be frustrating but they remain philosophical. “You can easily get from January to June without reflecting on what you have achieved,” Earl says. “So the time off has given me chance to do that. I haven’t been at home with family this long since I was 14. That’s the silver lining.”

“There are positives: time to think about things you can do better, things you’re not going to do any more,” Crawley says. “And, hopefully, the next few years will be a lot busier for both of us, playing for our country.”

Their childhood sporting heroes

Ben Earl I loved watching Kevin Pietersen. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve watched the 2005 Ashes and the way he took on Shane Warne. I never had one rugby hero but whenever I went up to Saracens when I was a teenager, Owen Farrell, Brad Barritt and Jacques Burger were the ones you looked out for in training. Even now I’m still amazed by some of the stuff Maro Itoje or Owen can do. Even as a player, you never stop being a fan

Zak Crawley I know he’s an Aussie but it was Ricky Ponting. I always wanted to bat like him in the nets. Outside cricket, I loved how Tiger Woods went about his golf. And, of course, how could I forget Darren Bent, Charlton hero, whose goals kept us up for a couple of seasons?