Ollie Pope Strengthens Claim to England Cricket's No 3 Slot with Bold 90 Versus Lions

It's difficult to gauge how much of the English team's warm-up game will be remotely important when their Ashes campaign starts a short distance away at the Perth venue on Friday – a brief gap in space or time but ages away in importance and environment – but if it managed only enhancing Ollie Pope's assurance, that on its own has rendered the endeavor worthwhile.

The English side's number three batsman – this fact is certainly completely established – built on his first-innings hundred by scoring a further 90 in the second innings, and what was remarkable was less about the total of runs but the manner in which they were scored. Periodically the 27-year-old seemed commanding, hitting a twelve fours and a couple of maximums, connecting with the ball perfectly but with devilish determination.

It was only a practice match against a Lions side that employed exactly 11 bowlers across a contest staged in front of a handful of spectators in a local ground, but it was nonetheless very praiseworthy. For the record, the England team, set a target of 202 following the Lions closed their follow-on innings on 251 for six, triumphed by five wickets when Smith raced the team over the winning target with a series of boundaries.

Crawley and Ben Duckett, the other two major first-innings' successes, both were dismissed in the second innings, while Joe Root added additional runs – 31 on this time – but was not significantly more convincing, before being bemused and subsequently bowled by Will Jacks. Harry Brook met an similar end soon afterwards.

Shoaib Bashir – who concluded the match having bowled 12 bowling spells for each side – will have encountered a portion of the hitting he confronted pretty aggressive. His initial six overs versus the Lions went for 56, with McKinney feasting to pitching that if not entirely loose was certainly not overly threatening.

At the end the sixth over of those deliveries, England's other bowlers had given away almost precisely the same number of runs – 57 – from 15, though the bowler grew a slightly less generous later on, giving up 27 from his final six. He took a single wicket, taking a sharp, low snare, diving to his right, to conclude Bethell's batting stint for 70, facing 80 deliveries.

Bethell, making up for achieving just three in the opening knock, was one of three fifty-scorers in the Lions team's leading batsmen. Ben McKinney's scores from opening batsman were steadier than the scores of their number three: he made 66 in their first innings and scored 68 in their second, taking 61 deliveries over his 50 runs, with five boundaries and two six-hit shots, each against Bashir's pitching. Bethell got to 68 then a poor shot to Ben Stokes at cover, who held a low grab at shin level.

Cox exhibited similar steadiness, and followed his initial innings' 53 with an additional 57, at just over a scoring rate of one. He produced a few remarkably handsome shots en route, such as a straight hit and a pull off back-to-back Brydon Carse balls to reach his fifty.

After missing the initial day of this match with a illness and contributed just the most minor of contributions to the second day, Carse delivered brilliantly when finally given the shot, with Ben McKinney and Jordan Cox among his three scalps.

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