Zak Crawley was "a revelation" for England in The Ashes, according to batting great David Gower.

England recovered from 2-0 down against Australia to draw the five-match series 2-2 and may have even forced a famous victory had the weather not intervened in the fourth Test at Old Trafford.

Crawley scored a magnificent 189 from 182 balls in that Manchester contest and finished the series as England's top scorer with 480 runs at an impressive 53.33 average.

Having also hit fifties at Edgbaston and The Oval, Crawley is now established at the top of the order after what had been a mixed start to his Test career.

Prior to this summer, the 25-year-old averaged just 27.60 and had only produced 10 scores of 50+ across his first 61 innings in the longest format.

Gower, who with 3,037 runs is England's second-highest run-scorer in Ashes history, hopes the opener has turned the corner.

"Look at the way Zak Crawley batted – for the last three years he has been an enigma," Gower said to Stats Perform. 

"You look at the man thinking he has got enormous talent. You look at the way he hits the ball and you think this man must make thousands of runs. And yet, he's averaging 20-odd. 

"Suddenly, in this series, that style has been proven to be worthy. 

"The trick for Zak Crawley now would be to carry on doing that wherever else he plays in the world and hopefully the lesson will have stuck. 

"There are ways he can do that because he did change his game slightly, he did become more nuanced in the way he approached the opening overs of an innings. 

"So people do learn as they go. This is the great thing – people learn throughout their careers and you have never nailed it for sure. You are learning each and every day that you are out there. 

"Zak Crawley certainly contended to be a player of the series, I think that was a revelation."

Gower felt it was difficult to select a player of the series, with Chris Woakes ultimately winning the award despite not playing in every match.

The former England captain added: "It is always hard picking a player of a series when you've seen so many performances. The official result was Chris Woakes, who came in to play only three Test matches.

"What was interesting to me was that, for all the preparation and all the planning, things fell into place – not entirely by accident, but by circumstance – with Ollie Pope having to be left out because of injury. 

"So the balance of the team changed, Woakes and [Mark] Wood came in and the Woakes-Wood partnership actually seemed to make a huge difference to England. 

"Wood's pace at Leeds was very much the difference. And Woakes [made an impact] mainly with the ball and a little bit with the bat as well. 

"Woakes just had a series that he will savour for a long, long time."

England do not return to Test action until January 2024, when they will travel to India for a five-match series.

They will now turn their attention to retaining the Cricket World Cup. The latest edition of the 50-over tournament starts in October.