Ollie Pope needs to get head right, both technically and mentally

Ollie Pope put a glove towards his face, rested his left elbow on his left knee and slumped down for what seemed like an eternity. He could not believe it, we could not believe it, nobody could quite believe it.

It was the first ball after tea, bowled by the left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja from the Nursery End. Pope had battled so hard through part of the morning session and then throughout the afternoon session, fighting the turgid pitch as hard as his own instincts, never finding fluency and never looking completely comfortable, but somehow finding a way through the brambles.

In a partnership with Joe Root he had put on only 70 runs in 24 overs in that postprandial crawl against some top-quality bowling — hard labour being undertaken in the hope of easier tasks arriving later on.

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There had, though, been a sign of impending danger when Jadeja had bowled an exploratory over before the break, with his fourth ball turning sharply past Pope’s defensive stroke. After much movement in the air and off the pitch from the seamers, this was not the news that England’s batsmen had wanted, but it was news nonetheless and there was nothing fake about it.

So when Jadeja was summoned to begin the day’s final session, Pope should have been prepared. Driving at length balls of whatever width from a spinner is a hazardous business at the best of times, and Pope certainly should not have been doing that to the first ball after a quick cup of tea. The edge was thick and the catch from the substitute wicketkeeper, Dhruv Jurel, quite magnificent (would Rishabh Pant have taken it?), but it was both a shot and a moment of slovenly thinking that characterises Pope at his most frustrating.

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All that graft had been undone in an instant. It is a long walk from the dressing rooms at Lord’s — down the stairs, through the Long Room and then down the steps out on to the outfield — and to have to make it in reverse so soon after coming out with such high aspirations will have been devastating, as Pope demonstrated with his long linger at the crease. Having had to traipse back through the silence of the Long Room after a Test-match duck, I can empathise greatly.

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Yes, Pope had made 44, which was 20 more than his two-innings contribution in the defeat at Edgbaston, but we must remember that he could easily have been out first ball here, just as he had been in the first innings in Birmingham.

Pope looks to the heavens in disbelief after being undone by a moment of slovenly thinking at Lord’s ALEX DAVIDSON/GETTY IMAGES

The openers, Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley, with some luck and, in the left-handed Duckett’s case, a number of blows to the body, had done well to negotiate the first hour when the ball mainly seamed, but thereafter it began to swing quite extravagantly with some variable bounce. It was tough going.

Suddenly, in the first over from Nitish Kumar Reddy, Duckett edged a short ball down the leg side. It was a surprise, not least because Reddy bowls at about 80mph and would, justifiably, have been previously considered the least threatening of India’s leather-flingers.

Out came Pope at No3 and he flashed at his first ball, which was wide and not full enough to be driving at so early in one’s innings. The India captain, Shubman Gill, so nearly clung on to the catch at gully, diving to his right. Just imagine: another first-baller for a man once described in this column as a worse starter than prawn cocktail (I prefer calamari) and another piece of ammunition for those gunning for Pope and Crawley.

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What’s more, Crawley was then out in the same over (a very good ball that bounced and left him) and Pope could have been out to his third ball, edging Mohammed Siraj short of second slip as the Indian cordon struggled to find their bearings with the slope and the slowness of the surface.

It was all happening, apart from in the runs column, where all was quiet, with Bazball in the bunker, simply because it had to be.

Indeed, after lunch there was a period of 28 dot balls before Pope dug out a Jasprit Bumrah yorker for a single, and, with the No3 facing all but two balls of Bumrah’s five-over spell, he just never got going. A pulled four off Akash Deep seemed to have resolved that but, four runs later, he would have been leg-before to the same bowler had an inside edge not saved him.

Root showed the way for Pope with the precision of his shot selection, but there are two other key things Pope can work on in my view: technically, to ensure his head does not topple over to the off side too much — that caused his first-ball downfall at Edgbaston — and, mentally, to stop trying to play his innings before it has happened. That is what creates the air of freneticism about his starts.

He needs to trust his game more. He still averages 42.42 at No3 for England, after all, a number about which Crawley can only dream at the moment.

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England v India: day two

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