For all that Ollie Pope’s summer started with two half-centuries and a hundred, he arrived at the crease on Friday evening needing a score. In three innings as stand-in captain he had posted six, six and one, and the run was starting to get embarrassing.
Coming in one ball into the day’s penultimate over, he faced just six deliveries before stumps and looked uncomfortable for most of them. The day ended with England 256 ahead, with one wicket down, and Pope returned on Saturday with his team dealing with no pressure from either scoreboard or clock. He could have consolidated, built, produced the kind of score that would silence the naysayers and relaunch his captaincy, demonstrating that he could lead the team on the field – which he did notably well in Sri Lanka’s first innings – while retaining the bandwidth to bat with a modicum of success.
