Ollie Pope ended the third day at Lord’s as he had the first – in the dressing room with his right shoulder on ice after jarring the joint while fielding, with the England camp reporting they were erroneously told by match officials that if he did not participate in Australia’s second innings they would have to field with only 10 players.
“We haven’t clarified yet with the officials as to why he was told he had to get back out there and field,” Jeetan Patel, England’s spin-bowling coach, said of Pope after Australia ended the day 130 for two, leading by 221 after England lost six wickets for 47 runs in the morning session to be dismissed for 325. “It’s a pretty tough situation when you nearly bust your shoulder. So he had to go back out there and it was always going to happen, wasn’t it?
“He’s so committed to this team he was always going to fall on something. He was told he had to be back out on the field or else we had to field with 10 men, and that made no sense to us. We’re as frustrated as everyone else that was out there and saw what happened, and he’s probably more angry than anything else.”
Cricket’s playing conditions stipulate a player can leave the field for an unlimited amount of time if they “suffer an external blow during the match”. Pope’s first-innings injury qualified, but having batted as normal at No 3 – and scored 42 – he was then deemed injury-free.
England would have preferred for the 25-year-old not to field, even if he then had to drop down the order in their second innings. But after the umpires’ ultimatum, Pope fielded until the 18th over, when he suffered a fresh external blow. As a result he will not have to field again, and can still bat at three.
“It’s a bit confusing,” Patel said. “It’s a bit messy if I’m being honest. But he’s a good kid and we know he’s going to rock up tomorrow with a smile on his face and put in for the team.”
Earlier, the former Australia coach Justin Langer criticised England’s gung-ho approach to batting, which saw them lose their last nine wickets for 137 runs, as “really strange cricket”. “When Australia went for that short-pitched approach and England kept hooking the ball, it didn’t make any sense,” he said. “The game of cricket is about problem-solving. I love aggressive cricket, but that made no sense to me. One fact of life is you cannot score runs from the changing room and if you’re not scoring runs you’re not winning games of cricket.”
Mitchell Starc took the key wickets of Joe Root, Harry Brook and – with the second ball of the day – Ben Stokes, all with short balls. “It’s a ploy we’ve now tried and had a bit of success,” he said. “They’re being aggressive with the way they want to go about it, we’re quite accurate and we saw an opportunity. It’s worked for one innings, potentially it’ll work again if we need to call on it.”
