Ollie Pope has said he will continue to develop his cricket brain amid a mounting body of evidence he is being groomed as a future England Test captain.
Ben Stokes has never officially named a deputy and when a virus placed his participation in last summer’s Headingley Test against New Zealand in doubt, it was Stuart Broad who was placed on standby to lead the team.
Broad’s paternity leave during the tour of Pakistan last December has since seen Pope assume the standby position, and the Surrey right-hander – 11 years Broad’s junior – was the official skipper for the warm-up fixtures in Abu Dhabi and Hamilton this past week as Stokes was rested.
“I think Popey is a great leader in the group,” said Broad, back for this New Zealand tour. “He’s grown so much in the last year, the way he operates, the confidence and responsibility he’s been given. There’s no doubt you can see him as a future England captain.”
The nickname “FEC” was given to a young Mike Atherton back in the day – the joke went that the E stood for educated, with the other two letters slightly ruder words – and though Pope doesn’t intend to claim it, the notion is starting to grow on him.
Pope said: “It’s not a conversation that’s necessarily been had. Stokesy is the captain, he knows exactly how he wants to run it. He comes up and bounces ideas off me sometimes, and he’ll do the same with some of the really experienced guys too.
“I’m going to keep developing my cricket brain. If that opportunity comes up in the future, I’ll make sure I can learn as much as possible before then.
The ECB has announced several changes to this season’s County Championship, including the trial use of Kookaburra balls and slightly amended batting bonus points, in the first practical evidence of the muted, highly refracted impact made by Andrew Strauss’s High Performance Review, published with great fanfare five months ago but met with hostility by many counties.
Alan Fordham, the ECB’s head of cricket operations, explained there had been a desire “to respond positively to the recommendations and not just to get a complete forward defensive out to them”. So while the review recommended a complete change to the scoring system – one point for a draw and between three and five for a win depending on a team’s highest score in any innings – instead there remains 16 points for a win but the reward for a draw drops back from eight to five – as it had been until 2020 – while teams will have to score 250 rather than 200 runs in the first 110 overs of their first innings before they bank their first batting bonus points, and 450 rather than 400 before they reach the maximum.
But the review’s proposal to trial the use of Kookaburra balls has been adopted, with the ECB reporting “tremendous” support for the idea, and the Australian-made balls will be used instead of the Dukes versions in the ninth and 10th rounds of county fixtures, starting on 25 June and 10 July – a trial Fordham described as going “in at the deep end in a moderate way”. There are talks ongoing regarding amendments to pitch regulations, intended to “keep people a bit more honest and drive standards up”, which are expected to conclude in time for the start of the season on 6 April, while teams will be able to register four overseas players at a time, rather than three.
Strauss’s proposals to reduce the amount of cricket being played, and the County Championship restructure he suggested to achieve that, have been comprehensively rejected but discussions continue about possible changes to the County Championship, the T20 Blast and the One-Day Cup that might improve their “quality and intensity”. “I don’t think there’s an awful lot fundamentally wrong with each of the competitions, it’s just how it all fits together,” said Neil Snowball, the ECB’s managing director of county cricket. “That’s the bit we need to challenge ourselves on.” Simon Burnton
“But at the same time, I realise I’ve got a big job at No 3 to keep doing. If I can keep impressing there, who know what the future holds. I’ll keep learning and developing as an all-round cricketer as much as I can. If that happens [becoming England captain], great. If not, that’s OK.”
These opportunities for Pope to lead are gold dust in the modern era, with Stokes and predecessors Joe Root and Alastair Cook all beamed up to planet England at a young age and thus having minimal experience at county level upon taking the top job.
Though captain at Cranleigh School growing up, Pope has performed the role just once for Surrey – a run-soaked draw against Glamorgan at the Oval in 2021 that was remembered with a grimace and a smile on Friday, the visitors sticking 672 runs on the board before he personally made 274 in response.
For now the focus is on facing New Zealand’s attack in next week’s day-night first Test at Mount Maunganui. The Black Caps will be the first team to get a second crack at England’s new aggressive style under Stokes, having suffered a 3-0 defeat last year.
“I’m interested to see [how they respond]; to see if they adjust,” Pope said. “But at the same time, that series in the summer, each of those Test matches there were points where it could have gone either way. So they’ll probably see it from that perspective and also trust what they do in their own conditions.
“We’ve sort of seen glimpses of the way we play going to other teams at points and so it’ll be interesting to see if anything that we’ve done has rubbed off on them.”
New Zealand will be under new leadership also, Tim Southee having taken over from Kane Williamson since that memorable encounter and set for his first home series in charge after the recent 0-0 stalemate in Pakistan.
Trent Boult will be missing for the hosts, however, with the left-armer – architect of England’s 58 all out during their last pink-ball Test in New Zealand five years ago –opting out of the series as he pursues Twenty20 opportunities.
Pope added: “He has definitely got me out a couple of times [three], so you can obviously see the positives. You also want Test cricket to be the best versus the best and challenge yourself. But they’ve got some high quality bowlers to come in for him.”
