Pope Strengthens Claim to England Cricket's Number Three Spot with Bold 90 Against Lions

It's tough to gauge how relevant of the English team's warm-up match will end up being meaningful when their Ashes campaign begins 10km away at the Perth venue on the coming Friday – no distance in space or time but light years away in significance and atmosphere – but if it achieved nothing more than strengthening Ollie Pope's self-belief, that by itself has made the effort beneficial.

England's number three batsman – this fact is undoubtedly completely certain – built on his first-innings century by adding an additional 90 in the second innings, and the most impressive was not so much the number of scored runs but the way in which they were accumulated. Periodically the 27-year-old appeared imperious, striking a twelve boundaries and a two of maximums, hitting the ball sweetly but with aggressive determination.

It was only a friendly versus a England Lions side that used a total of 11 bowlers throughout a match staged in amid a handful of people in a open field, but it was nonetheless hugely impressive. To note, the England team, needing of 202 once the Lions closed their follow-on innings on 251 for six, won by five wickets after Smith hurried the team across the winning target with a stream of fours and sixes.

Crawley and Duckett, the remaining significant first-innings performers, both fell short in the second innings, while Root added further points – 31 on this instance – but was not significantly more dominant, prior to being puzzled and subsequently dismissed by Will Jacks. Brook suffered an similar fate soon afterwards.

Bashir – who finished the game having bowled 12 bowling spells for either team – will have encountered part of the hitting he confronted quite hostile. His initial six deliveries against the Lions went for 56, with Ben McKinney feasting to deliveries that if not completely loose was certainly not overly dangerous.

By the conclusion the sixth spell of that period, England's three other bowlers had allowed nearly exactly the identical number of runs – 57 – from 15, though Bashir became a little less leaky as time passed, allowing 27 from his last six. He claimed a single wicket, holding a sharp, low-down snare, falling to his right, to finish Bethell's knock for 70, off 80 deliveries.

Bethell, compensating for scoring only a small score in the initial innings, was a member of three players half-centurions in the Lions team's leading batsmen. Ben McKinney's returns from opening batsman were more consistent than the scores of their number three: he notched 66 in their first innings and went two better in their second, taking 61 deliveries for his fifty, with five and two six-hit shots, both off Bashir's's pitching. Bethell reached 68 before a mis-hit to Ben Stokes at cover, who made a low catch at low down.

Cox showed similar reliability, and backed up his first-innings 53 with an additional 57, at slightly more than a run per delivery. There were several remarkably beautiful hits on the way, such as a drive down the ground and a pull against consecutive Carse balls to reach his fifty.

After missing the first day of this match with a illness and made merely the least significant of inputs to the second day, Brydon Carse bowled brilliantly when at last afforded the chance, with McKinney and Cox part of his three scalps.

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