Pope Strengthens Position to England's No 3 Spot with Impressive 90 Against Lions

It's hard to know how significant of the English team's warm-up game will prove relevant when their Ashes series campaign starts not far at Perth Stadium on Friday – a short span in space or time but light years away in importance and environment – but if it achieved only boosting Pope's assurance, that by itself has rendered the exercise valuable.

England's number three batsman – that much is certainly totally clear – built on his first-innings ton by scoring a further 90 in the second, and the most impressive was not merely the quantity of scored runs but the style in which they were accumulated. On occasion the young batsman appeared dominant, hitting a twelve fours and a couple of maximums, hitting the ball beautifully but with devilish purpose.

This was just a friendly versus a Lions squad that employed fully 11 pitchers throughout a contest played in before a small group of onlookers in a public park, but it was still hugely praiseworthy. Officially, the England team, chasing of 202 once the Lions declared their second innings on 251 for six, triumphed by five wickets in hand when Smith sped the team over the winning target with a stream of boundaries.

Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the other two big first-innings' successes, both were dismissed in the second innings, while Root scored additional runs – 31 on this occasion – but was far from more assured, before being puzzled and accordingly bowled by Jacks. Brook experienced an same fate soon afterwards.

Shoaib Bashir – who finished the fixture having delivered 12 bowling spells for each side – will have encountered a portion of the strokes he bowled to pretty challenging. His initial six overs against the Lions conceded 56, with McKinney taking advantage to deliveries that if not completely loose was surely not very threatening.

At the end the sixth over of those overs, the English side's three other pitchers had allowed nearly exactly the identical number of points – 57 – from 15, though the bowler grew a somewhat less generous in time, conceding 27 from his last six. He took one dismissal, making a smart, low snare, leaning to his right side, to conclude Jacob Bethell's knock for 70, off 80 balls.

Bethell, making up for scoring merely three runs in the first innings, was a member of three fifty-scorers in the Lions' top order. McKinney's returns from opening batsman were steadier than those of their number three: he made 66 in their initial knock and scored 68 in their second innings, facing 61 balls over his half-century, with five and two maximums, each against Bashir's's pitching. Bethell made 68 then a poor shot to Stokes at cover, who took a stooping grab at shin level.

Jordan Cox showed comparable consistency, and built on his first-innings 53 with a further 57, at slightly more than a scoring rate of one. He played several remarkably elegant hits during his innings, such as a straight drive and a pull shot against successive Brydon Carse balls to achieve his 50 runs.

Having missed the initial day of this fixture with a stomach upset and provided merely the smallest of contributions to the follow-up, Brydon Carse pitched superbly when at last given the shot, with McKinney and Jordan Cox part of his three dismissals.

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