If training has been anything to go by this week then Ollie Pope has already shown himself to be a shrewd England captain. Dan Lawrence has been performing drills for short-leg, suggesting the newbie in the lineup will be stationed in Pope’s usual spot against Sri Lanka.
Essex apparently offered danger money to players plonked at boot hill in the 1980s but the best batter of the county’s current crop – albeit a Surrey strutter these days – will be on the same match fee as his teammates.
Maybe this is the first tactical misstep of the Pope regime. After all, he has been the one with the cat-like reflexes at short-leg the past few years; a best friend to the spinners and the quicks, forever chirping away under the lid and catching mice when they pop out. Pope has not even started the job, has performed it a handful of times for Surrey and has now moved one of the team’s strengths elsewhere in the field. Perhaps alarm bells should be ringing, like the ones that briefly interrupted Sri Lanka’s net session on Tuesday.
Related: England ‘still Ben Stokes’ team’ but Sri Lanka Test offers chance to plan ahead
And so there is a first slab of analysis in what is Pope’s three-Test audition to be the long-term successor to Ben Stokes as captain. Although how to assess a stand-in – whether they can truly show off their full wares – is not entirely straightforward given the brief.
When Stokes stepped in for Joe Root for the first Test against West Indies in the bubble summer of 2020, for example, he found a note in the captain’s blazer telling him to “do it your way”. But there was little to signpost the Bazball of recent times during that four-wicket loss, the team set up to chisel out runs rather than muscle them and featuring a handful of the players selected and emboldened by Stokes.
While Stokes has told Pope to bring a personal touch, be it team talks or making plays out in the middle, this is the context in which the audition should probably be viewed. Along with Brendon McCullum, the head coach, England’s totemic all-rounder has set an iron-cast template and, given he will be on the ground for all three matches as he recovers from his hamstring tear, a divergence is unlikely. Pope will be leading a weakened team with its balance disrupted by the loss of Stokes – the tail now longer to accommodate Matthew Potts in a five-man attack – and Lawrence a makeshift opener due to Zak Crawley’s busted finger.
Pope’s first press conference as England Test captain – he will be the 82nd man to perform the role but just the fifth in the past 15 years – was a pretty assured, confident affair. He stressed a desire for continuity of messaging and in particular regarding the handling of his bowlers, something he has been observing closely during this summer of renewal.
They make for two very different characters – Stokes from working-class Cockermouth in Cumbria, Pope born in Chelsea – but they have been very much aligned for some time, Pope’s own Test career revived by the backing of his captain two years ago.
A glimpse of this came in Hyderabad this year when Pope addressed the players on the third morning, reminding them to remain in the present despite a seemingly dire match situation. He then set about marshalling an astonishing fightback with the high-wire, sweep-heavy 196 on which victory was secured.
As Pope put it on Tuesday, batting may be the most straightforward part of the job over the next three weeks; the one area where he can focus solely on his own game in the knowledge it is for the betterment for the team as a whole.
This is also the first Test match in England since the death of Graham Thorpe, whose impact as hero, batting coach and friend to much of the current generation was profound. Pope and his players will wear black armbands for the duration of the match, while spectators will applaud his life before the start of play on day one.
England (confirmed): Dan Lawrence, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (c), Joe Root, Harry Brook (vc), Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Matthew Potts, Mark Wood, Shoaib Bashir
Sri Lanka (confirmed): Dimuth Karunaratne, Nishan Madushka, Kusal Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dhananjaya de Silva (c), Dinesh Chandimal (wk), Kamindu Mendis, Prabath Jayasuriya, Milan Ratnayake, Asitha Fernando, Vishwa Fernando
“He was a great man,” said Pope. “I remember him saying one thing to me, which was: ‘Never let the runs you’re scoring define you as a person.’ In a bit of a rut when you’re young, that was exactly what I needed to hear.
“It shows what a people’s person he was. He was loved in the changing room. He’s such a sad loss to everyone, to the country, his family and the boys as well. He is missed and we’ll honour him this week.”
Like West Indies before them, Sri Lanka enter the series after a single warm-up and the scorecard after their seven-wicket defeat to the Lions was not pretty. This is their first Test since April, their first three-match series for six years and their first red-ball cricket in England since 2016. Unlike West Indies, there are proven batters in their lineup – 71 Test centuries in the XI, compared with England’s 47 (with Root making up 32 of them) – local input from Ian Bell as a coach, plus a group of seamers brought through under their previous head coach, Chris Silverwood.
As well as Kamindu Mendis, a typically unorthodox Sri Lankan talent who bowls finger-spin both left- and right-handed, their frontline slow bowler, Prabath Jayasuriya, has taken a remarkable 71 wickets in 12 Tests.
Spinners tend to enjoy the bounce here and so short-leg, the spot vacated by captain Pope, could well be in the game.
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