Ollie Pope Reinforces Claim to England Cricket's Number Three Spot with Impressive 90 Against Lions

It is difficult to gauge how much of the English team's warm-up fixture will end up being important when their Ashes campaign kicks off a short distance away at Perth Stadium on Friday – no distance in space or time but light years away in significance and mood – but if it achieved nothing more than enhancing Ollie Pope's confidence, that by itself has rendered the exercise beneficial.

England's number three batsman – this fact is certainly totally established – built on his first-innings century by scoring an additional 90 in the second innings, and the most impressive was less about the quantity of scored runs but the way in which they were accumulated. At times the 27-year-old appeared imperious, smashing a twelve boundaries and a pair of sixes, hitting the ball sweetly but with fierce determination.

This was just a friendly versus a England Lions side that used exactly 11 bowlers across a match played in amid a few dozen of onlookers in a open field, but it was nonetheless hugely noteworthy. For the record, the England team, set a target of 202 once the Lions ended their follow-on innings on 251 for six, won by five wickets in hand when Jamie Smith raced the team across the winning target with a series of fours and sixes.

Crawley and Ben Duckett, the two other big first-innings achievers, both fell short in the second innings, while Root scored several more runs – 31 on this instance – but was not significantly more convincing, then being confused and accordingly out by Jacks. Harry Brook suffered an identical end soon afterwards.

Shoaib Bashir – who finished the fixture having delivered 12 bowling spells for either team – will have faced part of the batting he bowled to rather aggressive. His initial six overs against the Lions cost 56, with McKinney feasting to deliveries that if not completely poor was certainly not overly intimidating.

At the end the sixth over of those overs, the English side's other bowlers had given away almost precisely the equivalent amount of points – 57 – from 15, though Bashir grew a little less generous later on, conceding 27 from his last six. He claimed a single wicket, making a sharp, low-down catch, leaning to his right, to end Bethell's innings for 70, off 80 balls.

Jacob Bethell, redeeming scoring just three runs in the first innings, was among a trio of fifty-scorers in the Lions' top order. Ben McKinney's returns from opener were more consistent than those from their number three: he scored 66 in their initial knock and scored 68 in their second innings, facing 61 balls over his half-century, with five fours and two six-hit shots, the pair from Bashir's's pitching. Bethell got to 68 then a poor shot to Stokes at cover, who held a low catch at shin level.

Jordan Cox exhibited similar reliability, and backed up his first-innings 53 with a further 57, at just over a run a ball. He played some remarkably beautiful strokes on the way, featuring a drive down the ground and a hook off successive Carse balls to reach his half century.

Having missed the opening day of this match with a stomach upset and made merely the least significant of inputs to the second, Carse delivered superbly when at last given the shot, with McKinney and Jordan Cox part of his three wickets.

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