Follow UsHarsha Bhogle very quietly asked Ollie Pope during the post-match presentation- “Five Test hundreds, Ollie, fair to say this is the best?”
All Ollie Pope did was give a very small nod, a smile and said, “100%”. He added, “To come here to India - probably the toughest place for a batter to come at the minute - yeah, to start a series like that on a winning cause, definitely heads and shoulders above the other four.”
It was a very up-and-down Test match for Ollie Pope, who might have scored 196 in the second innings but looked very fidgety and was caught out in the slips cheaply for a solitary run. It’s also notable that Pope had shoulder surgery after the Ashes, and this five-Test series is also his comeback for England.
When asked about the changes he made during the game and for the conditions in general, Pope was quite elaborate.
“I’ve tinkered [with my technique] throughout my career so far,” he said. “I’ve changed my technique a bit for the series specifically. I had shoulder surgery? So I’ve had a long time to prepare for this series and make some adjustments to what I produced the last time we were here three years ago.”
The last time Ollie Pope was here in India in 2021, he scored only 153 runs in four Tests. However, the changes he made this time have already got him 197 runs in a single Test match.
“It was about covering my inside edge and trying to put some pressure back on the bowlers as well with the sweeps and reverse sweeps..the guys we are facing are very skilled bowlers. You can pretty much know where each ball will land, and if you try to defend each ball, there’s probably a higher chance to get out than if you play a cross-batted shot.”
Pope used the cross-batted shots on a turning to incredible effect. So much so that India’s head coach Rahul Dravid called it “an exceptional innings”, and skipper Rohit Sharma called it “one of the best [innings] that I’ve seen in Indian conditions by an overseas batter.”
Pope also credited England’s pre-series camp in UAE for helping him build his confidence for the tour. He said,
“In the past, I’ve generally been someone who needs a couple of knocks to start feeling my best, but credit to Baz [Brendon McCullum] and Stokesy [Ben Stokes] for the way we’ve gone about this whole week in general.”
“I brushed that first innings behind me pretty quickly…We’ve done all that work in Abu Dhani in the pre-camp and just tried to enjoy it. That’s allowed us to come back from the big deficit.”