First hundred as Ben Stokes stand-in reaffirms credentials of England’s No. 3
Andrew Miller06-Sep-2024For three hours on Friday afternoon, the Kia Oval was as dank as dank can be. The weather was as void as a day-five Test ticket; a blanket of moderate, moist nothingness enveloping London even as an apocalyptic downpour rumbled through the Surrey hills, several miles to the south. It was a microcosm of the modern English Test summer, a permanent hostage to more potent weather patterns elsewhere in the globe.For Ollie Pope, however, it proved to be the perfect place to be stuck in the doldrums.Pope was 14 not out from 21 balls when, at 12.18pm, the umpires bowed to the bleakness and pulled the teams from the field. Already he had produced his best innings of the series, not quite in terms of runs (that, for the time being, remained his 17 in the second innings at Lord’s), but in terms of that elusive parameter “intent” – which, as his recent dismissals could attest, can be a fickle, double-headed beast.It had been “intent”, after all, that did for Pope in each of the first two Tests, including the top-edged uppercut that flew straight to deep point as England pushed for quick runs in that most-recent innings. And it was “intent” that lured each of England’s three dismissed batters to their doom at The Oval – including Ben Duckett, who died as he had lived during his anarchic knock of 86 from 79 balls by playing one scoop too many, almost as if it were a tribute to Joe Root’s own obsession with the stroke in recent times.Related
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And likewise, there was Dan Lawrence, onto whom that ever-roving media spotlight is sure now to fall after five increasingly sketchy auditions as a Test-match opener. In fact, Lawrence’s botched pull to gully had an awful lot in common with Pope’s first-innings extraction at Lord’s – “a long-hop that needed to be hit for four,” as Duckett recalled it in his defence of his captain’s up-and-at-’em approach.For some reason, the sins elsewhere in England’s batting approach are considered more forgivable. It’s as if Pope’s flighty footwork early in an innings, and his propensity to make decent deliveries look unplayable, are character flaws rather than technical ones. A manifestation of “weakness” in the literal sense, rather than just a slight deficiency in his alignment.However, the narrative moves almost as quickly as the scoreboard in this England regime, and by the time the bleakness descended over the Oval again, Pope had lifted his own gloom in the manor to which his career has been born. It’s early days to claim he is “synonymous” with The Oval – Jack Hobbs and Alec Stewart won’t be surrendering their gates just yet – but this first Test hundred at his home ground was also the 12th of a first-class career in which he averages in excess of 83.68 at the venue.That’s better than Mahela Jayawardene’s record at the SSC (a venue at which he truly is synonymous), not to mention every other batter to have dominated a single first-class venue since 2000, including Mark Ramprakash, another Surrey and England cricketer whose domestic dominance also attracted askance suggestions that he wasn’t quite cutting it at the highest level.
“As for proving he had the requisite character for this job, even Pope’s hardest-to-please critics would struggle to fault a matchwinning century to cap a 3-0 series sweep”
Reading between the lines, that statistic perhaps explains some of the unsually intense scrutiny that Pope has attracted of late. It was only 24 hours earlier, after all, that Brendon McCullum, England’s Test coach, had been spelling out the real and lasting differences between the requirements at Test and county level, as a means of justifying Josh Hull’s selection on the strength of two Championship wickets at 182.50 this season.Three summers ago, on the other hand, Pope had been averaging a literally Bradman-esque 99.94 at The Oval, only to return from the 2021-22 Ashes with 67 deeply skittish runs at 11.16, a performance that made one of the most visceral cases yet for the extent to which England’s first-class system had been letting down its best young talent. Some of the residual criticism he attracts could well stem from him being a symptom, not a cause, of England’s previous struggles. In an era of renewed batting success, he’s not yet proven which mould he truly belongs to.Roll the tape forward another two years, however, and we’re starting to peer down the other end of the telescope. Pope’s recent “struggles”, if that is even the right word, hark back to the single greatest performance of his lifetime, and many others’ combined: that preposterous 196 in England’s first-Test victory over India in Hyderabad in March, when he swapped his hard-handed defensive prods for swishy-wristed reverse-sweeps for ones, twos and fours, and propelled this regime to one of their greatest overseas Test wins of all time.Never mind that his returns dipped for the rest of that tour as India’s spinners wised up, Pope’s apparent loss of equilibrium since Hyderabad was best expressed by his early-season displays for Surrey right here at The Oval: 156 runs at 26, and just one half-century in seven innings. But, as if to prove that the Hull Paradox is now England’s lodestar, he quickly put all that behind him with a century at the second attempt against West Indies (albeit he still gave the impression that something wasn’t quite right with his game).This, however, is a far more emphatic retort. A first Test century as England captain, and the second-fastest by an England captain too, from a racey 102 balls. Uniquely, it also made him the first player in history to score each of his first seven centuries against different opponents – a sign of his versatility on the one hand, but maybe also of his failure to grasp any single series by the throat, in the manner that might be expected of an international No. 3.Ollie Pope was proactive on the way to his fastest Test hundred•Getty ImagesNevertheless, it’s been a dizzying few weeks for England’s stand-in skipper, who has already led the Test team on three more occasions than he has ever led Surrey in the County Championship. Ben Stokes tried to warn him in advance about the accompanying uptick in press scrutiny, but that reached quite the crescendo during last week’s Lord’s Test, when Michael Vaughan unleashed the sort of character assassination that can be hard to live down – especially if you are, as Vaughan put it, “not the kind of personality” that should be leading his country in a Test match.Unless, of course, you can respond as he did here, on the patch of south London real estate that he knows better than any of his contemporaries. Pope’s internalised response to the moment of his three figures spoke volumes for the pressure he’s been under, as he roared with initial glee before scrunching it down into a deeply relieved, and no doubt satisfied, moment of self-reflection. And much as he’d been leading the glee on the Lord’s balcony for the feats of Root and Gus Atkinson last week, it was left to his team-mates to truly let rip with the celebrations.”Everyone’s so happy for anyone’s success in this dressing room, it’s an incredible place to be,” Duckett said. “It shouldn’t be the case, but there has been quite a lot of noise around Popey in the last few weeks. The only judgment I’ve seen is that he’s taken over as Test captain, and you only have to look at an innings like today [to see] that’s had no impact on him.”Sure, he had some luck – not least with the ropey efforts of a Sri Lanka seam attack that, in the generous assessment of their bowling coach, Aaqib Javed, got “overexcited” by the possibilities on such a dank day. On another day, his misjudged steer through the cordon would have gone to hand, but in riding out three blows to his elbow, the first of which drew blood and required lengthy treatment, he also showed it was no picnic out there, in spite of his fondness for this particular patch of grass. As for proving he had the requisite character for this job, even his hardest-to-please critics would struggle to fault a matchwinning century to cap a 3-0 series sweep.”I know what it’s like at the top of the order, and he’s had a far better summer than I have,” Duckett added. “The fact of the matter is he’s batting No. 3 in England, which is one of the toughest spots to bat in. To block that out and go and score an incredible hundred today was so good, and you could see that from his emotions as well. We’re all extremely happy for him.”
