As the day and Sri Lanka’s innings drew towards its close, with England forced to bowl spin from both ends because it was too dark to safely attempt anything faster, Ollie Pope was one of five players still with sunglasses perched on their heads. At the end of both lunch and tea these players had emerged back into the Manchester gloom with shades in place, just in case things should suddenly and unexpectedly brighten. It was hard not to conclude from this spectacle that this is not just an inherently aggressive team, it is an unfailingly optimistic one.
This was Pope’s time to shine. The day had begun with a pre-match huddle that had as many speakers as a night at the Democratic national convention, and incidentally as many voluntarily deposed former leaders named Joe. Ben Stokes spoke at length, Brendon McCullum followed, and Pope as stand-in captain indicated that he knew both his place and the limits of his audience’s patience with some brief concluding remarks, which presumably amounted to: “What they said.” On the eve of the match he had promised that the team would hear “a lot of the same messages from a different voice”, and he had been half right.
