Sticking with Ollie Pope could hurt England's Ashes chances

Picking Ollie Pope over Jacob Bethell to bat at No 3 against India is the fair call but that does not make it the right one.
There is a difference between the two and it threatens to haunt England as they stand on the cusp of a run of 10 Test matches that Rob Key, the director of cricket, admitted this week would be used to 'define this era'.
Ollie Pope scored 171 in his last innings when Bethell missed the Zimbabwe Test to play in the Indian Premier League, doing everything he could to keep his place when it looked as though a new kid had come along and taken to No 3 like a natural.
Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have honoured that performance against a poor Zimbabwe attack and gone with Pope against India, despite the baggage he brings. Pope averages 24 against India, and just 15 when faced with Australia. When the pressure of a big series takes hold, Pope has floundered.
In 98 Test innings, Pope has scored eight hundreds, one every 12.25 innings, which is better than Graeme Hick (one in every 14) but slightly worse than Paul Collingwood (one in 11). No disrespect to Collingwood, a fine scrapper for England, but expectations of Pope were higher when he started out.
Pope's numbers are inflated by the Zimbabwe 171 and 205 against Ireland. Those runs still needed to be scored, but if you subtract the performances against the two minnows his average drops to 32. Suddenly, six hundreds in 96 innings looks pretty thin and in 36 of those, he has been dismissed facing 20 balls or fewer, not exactly the rock a team want at No 3 against the new ball.
Bethell has no such history because he has barely played any cricket and to anoint him as a No 3 without a professional hundred to his name is a gamble, too, but his composure in his three Tests so far marked him out. He averaged 52 in New Zealand and, at the end of that tour, the futures of both Bethell and Pope appeared settled.
Bethell would build experience this summer against India, a high-pressure series that is as close to playing Australia as is possible to experience.
Pope, meanwhile, would become the reserve keeper-batsman, a cover lower down the order where he looked so much more comfortable in New Zealand, making two important fifties batting at No 6.
Instead, based on a performance against Zimbabwe rather than a high-quality New Zealand side, Pope is back at No 3 and how he responds this time will be career-defining. He knows there is a rival ready to take his place, and a player who has struggled to shut out the external pressures of the job will have to learn a laser-like focus against a Jasprit Bumrah-led attack. It will be hard. Bumrah has dismissed Pope five times, most gallingly bringing him back down to earth at his highest peak. In the innings after his 196 in Hyderabad, Pope reached 23 in Visakhapatnam only for Bumrah to detonate his stumps with a fine yorker. Pope scored 95 in his next seven innings.
Akash Chopra " If Bumrah's Ball to Ollie Pope was sent down during the ashes, it could have been a contender for the ball of the century " pic.twitter.com/tFvdlhDKnz
— Sujeet Suman (@sujeetsuman1991) March 12, 2024
There will be no going back if he fails this time. With James Rew and Jordan Cox candidates to be Jamie Smith's back-up in Australia, there are no lives left for Pope.
Bethell should play in the County Championship for Warwickshire against Somerset on Sunday, his first game in red-ball cricket since the Hamilton Test in December. Where his county bats him will be of immediate interest. Surely they will not keep him down at No 7, like they did before his England call-up.
Bethell cannot be blamed for staying at the IPL. It is up to those higher up to make the decision about where a 21-year-old plays his cricket, and England should have recalled him for the Zimbabwe Test, not just to avoid the messiness with Pope, but to give Bethell the experience he badly needs.
But instead England and the England and Wales Cricket Board lacked the appetite to upset India relations and allowed one of their young talents to be an IPL bench-warmer (he was not even in the first-choice RCB XI) instead of playing Test cricket. Now they are dealing with the knock-on effect.
It runs the risk of Pope failing, Bethell taking his place but in the meantime missing matches and time that would be so useful before the Ashes tour, not just to develop his batting but also his left-arm spin.
There is a strong team spirit in this group and this is not a call that threatens to break any bonds, like it could have done in more fragile environments of the past. Pope is popular and being vice-captain carries some cache. He stepped in for Stokes last year and led the team to two series victories.
Bethell batted alongside Pope in the nets yesterday at Headingley and two took part in catching practice. There were no clues from their body language about who had been given the nod. It is a decision that Pope will have to justify pretty quickly.

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