Ben Duckett paid tribute to Ollie Pope’s approach after the No 3 made 100 not out on day two of the first Test against India at Headingley, saying the vice-captain “just stayed true to the way he plays” as England battled their way back into the game.
Pope shrugged off the combined pressure of coming to the crease with his side in trouble and with his own place in the team being the subject of constant debate. He did so by dealing with Jasprit Bumrah, the world’s best bowler, in glorious form and by coping with the worst batting conditions of the game tocompile his ninth Test century, sealed in the final moments of an extended day, with celebrations both in the middle and in England’s dressing room.
Duckett, who by the time Pope raised his bat was watching from the players’ balcony having scored 62, described his “goosebumps” when Pope scored the single he required to tick into triple figures minutes before stumps.
“He was just so calm coming out,” Duckett said. “He probably couldn’t come out in tougher conditions, with Jasprit Bumrah running down the hill with the lights on. I don’t know what’s inside his head, but he’s just stayed true to the way he plays, and there’s no better feeling than that, scoring a hundred against that attack, coming out in the first over. You could see it in the way he celebrated, and it didn’t just mean a lot to him, it meant a huge amount in the dressing room as well. I had goosebumps for him.”
Speculation about Pope’s place in the team had persisteddespite his 171in the one-off Test against Zimbabwe last month, though the quality and importance of his latest century, given the match situation when he emerged – England 467 behind and Zak Crawley having been dismissed off the final ball of the first over, by an extraordinary and utterly unplayable delivery from Bumrah – will surely silence the sceptics for a while at least.
“We’re very good at keeping things in the dressing room, but obviously you can hear the noise from outside of it,” Duckett said. “There’s noise outside the dressing room but there’s no noise in it. We’re not having discussions about who’s going to play. The way Pope has dealt with that has just been superb and just sums up and proves why he’s England’s No 3 and doing the things that he’s doing.”
The mesmerising Bumrah took all three of the English wickets to fall – including snaring Joe Root with the ball after Pope’s century celebrations – and also had Harry Brook caught at midwicket in the final over of the day only for the umpire to signal a no-ball, while India dropped three catches to allow England to reach 209 for three at stumps, still trailing by 262.
“He’s the best bowler in the world,” Duckett said of Bumrah. “He’s extremely hard to face. He’s good in any conditions, and when he’s coming in down the hill with the lights on and it’s swinging both ways, it’s tough. Just his ability to bowl three or four different balls with no cue – you don’t know if he’s bowling a bouncer, or a slow ball, a yorker, an away-swinger or an inswinger until it comes out of his hand. You’ve got to watch the ball so hard with him.”
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Duckett said “it could have been a lot worse”, given the chances India failed to take and the way the tourists’ innings fell apart during a period straddling the lunch break in which they lost their last seven wickets for 41, and their last six for just 24, to slip from the ominous position of 430 for three to a final score of 471.
India’s batting coach, Sitanshu Kotak, said: “It was a bit of a collapse I would say. I was expecting better than that, but it can happen. After 430 for three you expect to get a big score, because you’re sitting on a comfortable position, but after losing the toss it was very good. Headingley normally on day one a lot of wickets get taken by the bowling side, so I think we batted well.”
Josh Tongue took four of the last five, to demonstrate why Duckett’s nickname for him is so apposite. “I call him the mop, for mopping up the tails at the end,” Duckett said.