England’s stand-in captain, Ollie Pope, said his side had proved they were “not just a one-dimensional team” in the manner of their five-wicket win over Sri Lanka at Old Trafford.
Unlike many of their performances since Brendon McCullum was appointed coach in May 2022 England’s pursuit of victory was much more slow-burn than high-octane, but in difficult conditions and against impressive opponents Pope insisted it “showed where we’re coming on as a team overall”.
After ending Sri Lanka’s second innings for 326 England took nearly 58 overs over the pursuit of a victory target of 205, with Joe Root taking 95 balls to score his first boundary on his way to a match-winning unbeaten 62.
“Another day you might see us try to knock that off in 20 less overs, but the nature of the pitch, it was a pretty slow outfield as well and I thought they bowled really well,” Pope said. “It’s not just a one-dimensional team where we want to go out and score quickly, we want to keep reading situations slightly better and try and be as ruthless as we can. It’s not all about just trying to score as quickly as we can, it’s about getting the job done.”
With Ben Stokes and Zak Crawley missing through injury – and perhaps more changes to come, with Mark Wood a doubt for Thursday’s second Test at Lord’s after picking up a thigh strain – this was a youthful and somewhat unfamiliar side, but they nevertheless claimed a 13th win in 17 home games since McCullum’s appointment.
“You look around every now and then on the bus and you’re like: ‘Jeez, this is a proper young team,’” Pope said. “But we’ve got a great balance of experience and youth as well. Obviously it’s a shame not having Stokes out there, but it gives other guys opportunities to step up in slightly different roles. This is the kind of win that can give a lot of people confidence.”
Despite his inexperience as a captain, Pope “thought I dealt with it OK, I was pretty happy with it”. But he failed in both innings with the bat, scoring six in each knock. “I think that’s one thing I can take from this Test, making sure I’m captain when we’re in the field but when it’s batting time, it’s batting time,” he said. “I can draw a line once we’re off the field, get my pads on and that’s my time to focus on myself, because that’s what’s best for the team as well.”
Pope described the surface at Old Trafford as being “almost like the subcontinent”, but if the pitch was perhaps more familiar for the Sri Lankans, the weather certainly was not. “Hopefully we will have sun next week and that will be good for us,” said their captain, Dhananjaya de Silva.
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“It was tough here, it was cold and windy. We’re not used to that. There are positives here and there. We knew England would come hard against us. We had our plans but in the first innings we couldn’t execute them. Our mistakes were made in the first innings and that cost us the match.”