England’s vice-captain Ollie Pope has called upon his batters to be as ruthless as possible in their approach. England has adopted a very fierce and aggressive approach of taking on the game from the get go in the Stokes-Mccullum era. The side is just coming off a wonderful victory against West Indies in the 2nd Test at the Trent Bridge where they also clinched the series with a game to go.
“I feel that everyone has kind of grown into their roles and now there’s a real hunger,” Pope said in the lead-up to the third and final Test against West Indies in Birmingham. “There always is a hunger, but now there’s an extra bit in that batting line-up and now we feel like we can go on to do even better things.”At the time it was about building confidence; now it’s about hopefully we can keep becoming more and more ruthless.”
England crossed 400 in both the innings of the Trent Bridge test, making it the first ever instance in their history to achieve this feat. “We put on just over 400 in the third innings of the game and had we not done that it might’ve been a closer affair in the end,” Pope said. “We want to be as ruthless as we can as a batting unit, but still play the way we do because that’s our natural game. But being ruthless is being part of Test cricket as well.”
Pope feels that his side can maybe notch up “500 to 600” runs in three sessions on a good day.
“I got asked on Day 1…’Do you get told to play like that?'” Pope said. “No, we don’t. It’s just our natural games and the way we go about it. Sometimes we might score 280-300 in a day but that’s okay and probably because we’re reading situations. There might also be a day where we go and get 500 to 600 at some point in the future as well. And that’s a cool thing to have.
This home series against West Indies has came as a relief for the Ben Stokes led side. They faced a lot of criticism after there series loss against India away from home. India beat England by 4-1 last year. The score line of the series however, did not do justice to how closely fought the series was between two solid teams.
“There was obviously a lot said after the India series…,” Pope said. “I think winning can become a habit and the way we’ve gone about these two games is high class and that’s shown in the results so far.”
England still has a game remaining against the West Indies that is scheduled to be played from the 26th of July. Post this series Sri Lanka are set to tour to the UK to play 3 tests against the hosts. England will be looking to register some more wins under their belt to give them some chance to play the World Test Championship Final next year.
