Pope Strengthens Position to England Cricket's Number Three Slot with Strong 90 Against Lions

It is hard to gauge how much of the English team's warm-up game will end up being relevant when their Ashes campaign begins 10km away at Perth Stadium on the coming Friday – no distance in geography or duration but ages away in import and atmosphere – but if it accomplished only boosting Ollie Pope's self-belief, that by itself has made the exercise valuable.

England's No 3 – this fact is undoubtedly completely clear – built on his initial innings century by scoring a further 90 in the second innings, and what was impressive was not so much the total of scored runs but the style in which they were scored. On occasion the young batsman looked commanding, smashing a twelve fours and a two of sixes, hitting the ball perfectly but with fierce purpose.

It was merely a exhibition game versus a Lions side that used fully 11 pitchers during a game played in front of a small group of onlookers in a open field, but it was nonetheless hugely praiseworthy. To note, the England team, chasing of 202 once the Lions ended their follow-on innings on 251 for six, won by five wickets when Jamie Smith raced the team past the conclusion with a flurry of boundaries.

Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the other two significant first-innings' performers, both fell short in the second innings, while Root made additional points – 31 on this occasion – but was not enormously more dominant, prior to being confused and accordingly out by Will Jacks. Harry Brook experienced an same outcome shortly after.

Shoaib Bashir – who concluded the match having delivered 12 overs for each side – will have found a portion of the strokes he faced quite hostile. His first six deliveries against the Lions cost 56, with McKinney taking advantage to deliveries that if not exactly wayward was surely not very threatening.

At the end the sixth of that period, the English side's remaining three pitchers had conceded almost precisely the same amount of runs – 57 – from 15, though the bowler turned a somewhat less giving in time, conceding 27 from his final six. He secured one wicket, making a clever, low-down snare, leaning to his right side, to conclude Bethell's batting stint for 70, from 80 balls.

Bethell, making up for scoring just three in the first innings, was one of a trio of fifty-scorers in the Lions team's leading batsmen. McKinney's scores from opening batsman were more consistent than those from their number three: he notched 66 in their first innings and improved by two in their second, using 61 deliveries for his half-century, with five boundaries and two sixes, each off Bashir's bowling. Bethell reached 68 then a mis-hit to Stokes at cover, who took a low catch at ankle height.

Cox showed similar consistency, and followed his initial innings' 53 with a further 57, at about a scoring rate of one. There were a few remarkably elegant hits en route, featuring a drive down the ground and a hook against consecutive Carse deliveries to reach his half century.

Following his absence from the opening day of this match with a illness and provided merely the smallest of contributions to the follow-up, Carse bowled superbly when finally provided the chance, with Ben McKinney and Cox included in his three scalps.

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