The Oval Test so often feels like the end of something, but that is not really the sense as this summer of red-ball renewal draws towards a close.
For one, six home Tests against West Indies and Sri Lanka were always billed as a springboard to greater challenges for an evolving England team.
That evolution began with headline comings and goings at the summer’s start, and will continue to the last, with a debut this week for 20-year-old seamer Josh Hull.
The schedule, too, dictates that right now, nothing ever ends. England begin a white-ball series against Australia the day after this Third Test is scheduled to wrap up. Given the weather forecast for the Kia Oval, it is not out of the question that we make it to day five, either.
After Australia, it is quickly into Test series away from home against Pakistan and New Zealand, with a white-ball tour to the West Indies sandwiched in between. It is that kind of congestion that, until now, has made split head coaching roles a necessity, but no more.
The news this week that Brendon McCullum has signed a new contract through to 2027 and will also take charge of the white-ball teams from January adds to excitement over the future of the England men’s teams.
The end of the summer, this might be, but in many ways, it is just the start.
And yet there is one man arriving at The Oval this week who might just be looking back for something left behind. In what ought to have been a cash-in summer against moderate attacks, with the bat at least, Ollie Pope has rather lost his way. After a century and two fifties against West Indies in July, Pope has made just 30 runs in four innings since being handed the interim captaincy in Ben Stokes’s injury absence against Sri Lanka.
A pair of ugly dismissals at Lord’s last week looked a confluence of twin flaws: one that has always been there in the agitated, over-eager starter, and another confessed in the run-up to that game, where compartmentalising batting and captaincy has proven tricky.
In the latter sphere, Pope has done fine, on the cusp now of leading the second half of England’s first perfect home summer in 20 years.
True, his DRS record is abject. But the majority of reviews have been opportunistic, with England well ahead in the game, and several of the most ill-advised have been pushed hard by team-mates who, you sense, would have been a little less pushy if Stokes were in charge.
The lack of runs from No3, though, is a problem and has left Pope in the peculiar position of being both temporarily, the captain and also, in the long run, perhaps the most vulnerable of England’s first-choice top seven.
Stokes conceded this week that he may not be back from his hamstring injury in time for the First Test in Pakistan next month, in which case Pope would almost certainly lead the team again.
Runs in the role this week, then, on a home ground he has owned throughout his first-class career, would go some way to easing apprehension over that dual burden, not least his own.
