Pope Strengthens Claim to England's Number Three Slot with Strong 90 Versus Lions

It's tough to determine how relevant of the English team's warm-up game will be remotely meaningful when their Ashes series contest starts a short distance away at the Perth venue on Friday – a brief gap in space or time but ages away in import and environment – but if it managed only boosting Pope's assurance, that on its own has made the exercise worthwhile.

The English side's No 3 – that point is undoubtedly completely clear – followed his initial innings century by scoring a further 90 in the follow-up innings, and the most remarkable was not so much the quantity of scored runs but the manner in which they were scored. At times the 27-year-old appeared dominant, smashing a dozen boundaries and a couple of maximums, hitting the ball sweetly but with fierce intent.

It was merely a friendly against a Lions squad that employed exactly 11 pitchers during a game played in front of a small group of onlookers in a open field, but it was nevertheless very impressive. To note, England, set a target of 202 after the Lions closed their follow-on innings on 251 for six, succeeded by a margin of five wickets once Jamie Smith raced the team past the winning target with a series of boundaries.

Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the two other big first-innings successes, both were dismissed in the follow-up, while Joe Root made further runs – 31 on this instance – but was not enormously more assured, then being confused and accordingly bowled by Will Jacks. Brook suffered an similar end shortly after.

Shoaib Bashir – who concluded the game having delivered 12 bowling spells for each side – will have found a portion of the batting he faced quite aggressive. His opening six overs versus the Lions conceded 56, with Ben McKinney tucking in to bowling that if not entirely poor was certainly not overly intimidating.

At the end the sixth spell of those overs, England's remaining three pitchers had allowed almost precisely the same number of runs – 57 – from 15, though Bashir turned a somewhat less giving in time, conceding 27 from his last six. He took one wicket, taking a sharp, low snare, leaning to his right side, to end Jacob Bethell's knock for 70, off 80 balls.

Jacob Bethell, compensating for achieving merely a small score in the initial innings, was a member of a trio of fifty-scorers in the Lions team's leading batsmen. McKinney's returns from opener were steadier than the scores of their No 3: he scored 66 in their initial knock and scored 68 in their second, using 61 balls over his half-century, with five and a couple six-hit shots, the pair off Bashir's's pitching. Jacob Bethell made 68 then a poor shot to Stokes at cover position, who took a bending catch at shin level.

Cox displayed like reliability, and followed his initial innings' 53 with an additional 57, at just over a run a ball. He produced some remarkably handsome hits on the way, including a drive down the ground and a pull off successive Carse deliveries to attain his 50 runs.

Following his absence from the first day of this game with a illness and provided only the most minor of efforts to the follow-up, Carse delivered superbly when eventually provided the chance, with McKinney and Jordan Cox part of his three scalps.

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