"Mission accomplished" – The pride of Mason Crane after the frustrations of 2018

NICK FRIEND: If the season of 2018, which was ended by a stress fracture, was meant to be the follow-up to a Test bow that displayed far more promise than its figures suggested, then this campaign has been about just coming out the other side

This time last year, this might have looked a long way away for Mason Crane.

This is nothing particularly special, only a summer of normality after the nightmare of 2018, which began with an Ashes debut and ended with the painstaking recovery from a recurrence of a stress fracture.

If that season was meant to be the follow-up to a Test bow that displayed far more promise than its figures suggested, then this campaign has been about just reconsolidating and coming out the other side.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s mission accomplished,” he tells The Cricketer. “I got to the end of the season relatively unscathed.”

It’s all relative when you have been through the frustration that Crane has experienced; a side strain that flared up during Hampshire’s T20 exploits was his body’s only faux pas – some improvement on what came before.

Speaking to The Cricketer 12 months ago, the 22-year-old spoke candidly of his exasperation at his own personal circumstances.

“It is tough being injured,” he reflected back then. “You’re easily forgotten about when you’re on the sidelines. When you are playing and doing well, it’s obviously fantastic.

“But it is a sport of extremes – you’re absolutely on top of the world when you’re doing well, but when you’re injured or when things are not going quite as well, it is as if you’re not even there.

“It’s difficult because the world does just carry on, whether you’re there or not. It’s the worst thing ever being told that you’re going to be out for three or four months because everything else just carries on as if you didn’t really matter at all.”

That was then, however. He has recovered and come back stronger, as he insisted he would do. Liam Dawson’s place in England’s World Cup squad opened the door to an unexpected County Championship berth early on in the season. “Red-ball didn’t go to plan,” he admits.

Nevertheless, after so long out, a slow start was hardly unexpected. He points to an improvement in the longer format late on in the season, when pitches were drier, the weather warmer and Crane back into the rhythm of regular cricket. He played some second-team cricket without any of the pressure or scrutiny that comes with the Championship.

“It was just nice to have a long bowl; that was something I hadn’t done,” he acknowledges.

As Hampshire reached the final of the Royal London Cup, only Kyle Abbott and Liam Dawson took more wickets for the club than the leg-spinner. During an ultimately disappointing T20 group stage, his eleven wickets came at an economy of just 7.03.

^{Mason Crane took 11 wickets in last season's T20 Blast}

“Overall, I was really pleased with how the season went,” he says. “White-ball was pretty good – I felt good in that. It took me a while to get going in that – probably slightly longer than I anticipated, but after having so long out I should have seen that coming.

“But really, mission accomplished.” He is proud of his year, as well he might. There was a time when this was miles away.

“I don’t think – in a cricketing sense – there’s anything much harder that I’ll ever have to overcome than that,” he said last year, looking back on the blank slate that comes with returning from injury.

And while he has fallen behind in the pecking order for an international return for the time being, he has few complaints about how his season shaped up; if nothing else, the last year has provided some perspective. “Mission accomplished,” he repeats.

It was a white-ball effort that has earned him this: a winter to cherish – back on the field and learning from some of the best, as well as a lucrative contract in next year’s Hundred.

Last Wednesday, he was picked up in the draft for the T10 League in Abu Dhabi, while he was a £50,000 signing for Shane Warne’s London Spirit in the draft for the new competition.

In November, he will play under the tutelage of Deccan Gladiators head coach Mushtaq Ahmed in the 60-ball format. He features in a squad alongside Kieron Pollard and Shane Watson, as one of several spin options, with the experience of Australia’s Fawad Ahmed and the left-arm wrist-spin of Afghanistan’s Zahir Khan. It will be Crane’s first taste of this alternative cricketing universe.

“This is why I want to be involved in franchise cricket,” he explains. “You look at some of the names there that I’ll be playing with and being around – the stuff you can learn from them, you can’t get elsewhere.

“That’s why I want to be part of it. Even if you don’t play a game, you get to bowl with those guys every day and that’s going to help me. That’s all you can ask for really.”

The tournament provided the England man with his first real look at draft cricket – an unusual world, but for a long time commonplace in the franchise industry. He has entered them before, but only because he has felt he may as well. This is the first he followed one to keep tabs on his whereabouts.

His nerves came from a long-term belief that this is how he would spend the first part of his winter; it was set in his mind. “It’s a strange feeling,” he admits. “Your fate is in someone else’s hand.

“I was just following it on the live blog – I wasn’t watching the feed. It’s weird that you just wait for your name to come out and it could come out at any moment.

“I was just at home having dinner and I found out from other people first because the feed I was following was a few minutes behind. Everyone was texting me, saying well done. It was more a confirmation that now I’m actually going out there to do that.”

^{Shane Warne signed him at Sunday's Hundred draft; he made his England debut in 2018 against Australia}

Once he gets there, the pressure will be on. If cricket is a batsman’s enterprise at the best of times, then T10 is a bowler’s graveyard. For some context, in last year’s tournament, Northern Warirors made 183 for two in one game; Nicholas Pooran made 77 off 25 deliveries, Andre Russell 38 off nine.

As a bowler, one suspects that survival is the name of the game – it is the ferocity of T20 batsmanship, only with half the time.

Crane laughs at the prospect; among the competition’s batsmen lying in wait are Evin Lewis, Eoin Morgan, Moeen Ali, Chris Lynn and Shahid Afridi.

“I’ve given it some thought,” he says. “It’s going to be like bowling towards the end of a T20 – same skills, it’s just going to be a bit accelerated. That’s something I’m looking forward to.

“With The Hundred coming in, we’re all learning to embrace new challenges. It’s going to be exciting. I’ve spoken to a few guys who’ve done it before and they said it’s great fun and I’ll have the best time of my life. So hopefully, that’s true and I can get out there and enjoy it.”

Three winters ago, Crane worked with Stuart MacGill during a stint in Australia. Next summer, he will join forces with Warne. There can be few better to learn off than the greatest of them all. Needless to say, the he cannot wait.

The Australian great explained that once his side plumped for Mohammad Amir as an overseas seamer, Crane became the focus of attention, with Spirit wanting either an international fast bowler or a leg-spinner in their ranks.

“We were hoping to get Mason down the order and it worked out that way for us,” he said after the draft. Crane, on the other hand, was sat at home with mates, having first watched Manchester United face Liverpool.

“I’ve worked with him a little bit before,” Warne added. “Hopefully I can work with him and help him out tactically. He bowls pretty well in white-ball cricket. He takes a lot of wickets. Hopefully I can make him a bit better.”

After the travails of 2018, Crane is beginning to reap the rewards once again. This is what his hard work deserves.