Ollie Pope said he had been lucky after he was dropped twice on his way to scoring 121 on the first day of the second Test against West Indies, and had an unlikely explanation for his good fortune: the presence of his friend, the Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale.
“He seems to be my lucky charm,” Pope said. “He’s come to two other games and in one of them I scored 200. It always happens to be the day he’s there that I get the runs, so I think he can come more often.”
Pope’s century followed a score of 57 in England’s only innings of the first Test, coming after an inconsistent run of form for Surrey, for whom he has averaged 22.88 in this season’s County Championship. “It’s weird, I felt I was becoming a better player but for the first time the runs weren’t coming, and I couldn’t work out why,” he said.
“I didn’t have any doubts about my game, but you’re like, ‘Why’s everyone else in the country scoring runs and England’s No 3 isn’t?’ You’re frustrated sometimes about why it’s not happening but that’s just cricket, you want to go and score a hundred every day but sometimes it doesn’t work that way.”
Having been dropped on 46 and again on 54, it very nearly did not work that way here either. “It’s a good feeling, dropped catches. It’s kind of like a play and miss – sometimes I slash at a wide one and miss, and think, ‘Lucky I didn’t nick that.’ I use it as a lesson,” Pope said. “Batting, you’re never going to be completely perfect. Cricket goes in swings and roundabouts. My luck wasn’t with me in my county stint, but every now and then you get that bit of luck in international cricket and it’s just trying to make it count as much as you can.”
England were eventually bowled out for 416, benefiting from four dropped catches in all before losing their final wicket in the last over of the day. “We just did the best we could today despite putting down a few chances,” said Kevin Sinclair, who came into the West Indies team as a last-minute replacement for Gudakesh Motie, who woke up on Thursday feeling unwell. “I think they scored a little too many but to bowl out a side like that with that quality, I think we take that any day.”
West Indies surprised England by choosing to bowl after winning the toss. “The skipper was in control of what he wanted to do,” Sinclair said. “We wanted to put pressure on them and use the wicket a bit more.”
Inspired by memories of Jonny Bairstow’s fourth-innings blitz against New Zealand on this ground two years ago, Ben Stokes would have made the same decision, and assumed that on a glorious summer’s day his opponents would anyway opt to bat.
“I thought we’d just be bowling today,” Pope said. “To score 416 in such quick time, leaving four days left in the game on a good pitch, it’s a very pleasing day for us and hopefully a good enough score.”
