Pope Strengthens Claim to England's No 3 Role with Impressive 90 Versus Lions

It is difficult to determine how relevant of England's practice game will prove meaningful when their Ashes campaign starts 10km away at Perth Stadium on the coming Friday – no distance in space or time but ages away in import and environment – but if it accomplished nothing more than boosting Ollie Pope's self-belief, that alone has rendered the effort worthwhile.

The English side's number three batsman – that much is certainly completely certain – followed his first-innings century by scoring another 90 in the follow-up innings, and the most notable was not so much the quantity of scored runs but the manner in which they were made. On occasion the 27-year-old seemed dominant, smashing a dozen boundaries and a two of sixes, hitting the ball sweetly but with devilish intent.

It was merely a exhibition game versus a Lions team that deployed exactly 11 bowlers during a game played in amid a few dozen of spectators in a local ground, but it was nonetheless very praiseworthy. Officially, England, set a target of 202 after the Lions ended their follow-on innings on 251 for six, won by five wickets after Smith raced the team over the winning target with a flurry of boundaries.

Crawley and Ben Duckett, the other two major first-innings successes, both were dismissed in the follow-up, while Root scored several more points – 31 on this instance – but was not enormously more dominant, before being bemused and subsequently dismissed by Jacks. Harry Brook suffered an same fate a little later.

Bashir – who finished the fixture having bowled 12 overs for both teams – will have faced part of the hitting he confronted rather challenging. His first six deliveries versus the Lions cost 56, with McKinney taking advantage to pitching that if not exactly poor was surely not very intimidating.

After the sixth over of those deliveries, England's three other bowlers had allowed almost precisely the same amount of runs – 57 – from 15, though Bashir grew a little less giving later on, giving up 27 from his final six. He claimed one wicket, taking a sharp, low-down snare, leaning to his right, to end Jacob Bethell's innings for 70, off 80 deliveries.

Bethell, compensating for scoring merely three in the first innings, was among a trio of half-centurions in the Lions team's leading batsmen. Ben McKinney's returns from opening batsman were more consistent than those from their No 3: he scored 66 in their initial knock and went two better in their second, facing 61 balls over his half-century, with five and two sixes, each from Bashir's's bowling. Jacob Bethell reached 68 then a poor shot to Stokes at cover, who took a low catch at shin level.

Cox exhibited comparable reliability, and backed up his initial innings' 53 with another 57, at just over a run a ball. He played several exceptionally handsome hits on the way, including a straight drive and a pull shot from back-to-back Brydon Carse balls to reach his fifty.

Having missed the opening day of this match with a illness and provided merely the least significant of efforts to the second, Carse bowled brilliantly when eventually given the chance, with McKinney and Jordan Cox among his three dismissals.

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