Pope Cements Claim to England Cricket's No 3 Slot with Strong 90 Versus Lions

It is difficult to determine how significant of the English team's warm-up match will end up being meaningful when their Ashes battle starts 10km away at Perth Stadium on Friday – a brief gap in geography or duration but ages away in importance and mood – but if it achieved nothing more than enhancing Ollie Pope's self-belief, that alone has made the effort worthwhile.

The English side's number three batsman – that point is surely absolutely certain – followed his first-innings hundred by adding a further 90 in the follow-up innings, and the most impressive was not so much the number of runs but the manner in which they were scored. Periodically the 27-year-old appeared commanding, hitting a twelve fours and a pair of maximums, timing the ball beautifully but with fierce determination.

This was just a practice match against a Lions team that employed a total of 11 bowlers throughout a contest held in front of a handful of people in a open field, but it was nonetheless very noteworthy. For the record, England, set a target of 202 once the Lions declared their follow-on innings on 251 for six, succeeded by a margin of five wickets when Jamie Smith sped the team across the finish line with a flurry of fours and sixes.

Crawley and Duckett, the two other major first-innings' successes, both failed in the follow-up, while Root made further runs – 31 on this occasion – but was not enormously more convincing, prior to being bemused and accordingly dismissed by Jacks. Brook met an identical fate soon afterwards.

Bashir – who finished the match having bowled 12 bowling spells for both teams – will have found part of the strokes he bowled to rather challenging. His initial six overs against the Lions cost 56, with McKinney feasting to bowling that if not completely wayward was surely far from dangerous.

By the conclusion the sixth spell of those overs, England's remaining three pitchers had given away almost precisely the equivalent total of points – 57 – from 15, though the bowler turned a somewhat less generous as time passed, conceding 27 from his last six. He secured one wicket, taking a smart, low-down catch, diving to his right, to conclude Jacob Bethell's innings for 70, from 80 deliveries.

Jacob Bethell, redeeming achieving just a small score in the initial innings, was among a trio of fifty-scorers in the Lions team's top four. McKinney's scores from opener were more consistent than those from their number three: he scored 66 in their initial knock and scored 68 in their second innings, using 61 deliveries over his 50 runs, with five boundaries and a couple maximums, both against Bashir's's bowling. Jacob Bethell reached 68 prior to a mishit to Stokes at cover position, who held a bending catch at shin level.

Jordan Cox exhibited like reliability, and backed up his initial innings' 53 with a further 57, at about a scoring rate of one. He played several outstandingly elegant shots during his innings, such as a straight drive and a hook against consecutive Carse balls to reach his half century.

After missing the first day of this game with a illness and made merely the most minor of inputs to the second day, Carse pitched superbly when eventually afforded the chance, with Ben McKinney and Jordan Cox included in his three dismissals.

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