There was no talk of a declaration: Crawley

England were not considering declaring at nine down to get a crack at Australia with the pink-ball under lights, Zak Crawley said after the first day's play in Brisbane.

England captain Ben Stokes has made that move before. In the D/N Test at Mount Maunganui in February 2023, he had declared after 59 overs at 325/9 and then had New Zealand three down by stumps. England went on to win that Test. But at Gabba, Stokes stayed rooted to his seat in the dressing room, albeit in his whites, and watched Joe Root and Jofra Archer add an unbeaten 61 off 44 balls for the tenth wicket.

"There was no talk of a declaration," Crawley said. "We were just saying, 'go really hard,' and it was a win-win. If it comes off then we will get 50 runs like we did, or if you got out then we could have a crack at them under lights."

Crawley said England won the last hour, which also helped change the mood in the dressing room even if their original aim was only to push past 260.

"Yeah, I think it did [change the mood]," Crawley said. "I mean, we were pretty happy with 260 and having an hour at them at that point, to be honest. We were quite optimistic about that last hour and then it turns out we ended up batting for all of it. So like I say, it felt like a great chance for us either way with bat or ball to seize that last hour and yeah, I think we definitely won that last hour, so we are positive going into tomorrow."

Crawley, who entered the Test on the back of a pair in Perth, was central to England's strong position alongside Root, who finally brought up his first Test hundred in Australia. The opener said it was not difficult to move on from the early setback to the tour, even after a long gap between Perth and Brisbane.

"Yeah, I feel great. I felt really calm this morning and I was pleased that I could stay calm while batting and get a few runs," Crawley said. "Obviously I was disappointed to get out when I did. The pitch felt like it was just getting better then as well, so I felt like I left a few out there. Obviously, Rooty played unbelievably and we had a good day as a team. I am happy.

"It was a long time between games. We had some good training sessions here in Brisbane, five days of training, so it was a long wait. It would have been a long wait even if I had got two hundreds. I did some good work in the nets this week and felt comfortable with my game. I felt good in my game before Perth to be honest. It was just one of those weeks. I have played many bad games before and it was not too much to bounce back from."

Crawley said staying away from external noise helped him. "I have not seen any of the media stuff around my last game. I am sure it was not great, but I have not seen any of that so it did not affect me at all. I felt in decent touch before that game and I felt in decent touch before this game. I was just trying to trust my process and I was thankful today that I stuck to the game plan in the way I wanted to play.

"I have been working all week to be honest, trying to stay calm in the nets and just move slowly and pick my bat up lightly, and those things seemed to come off."