Pope plays himself out of form

They say five-match Test series are long enough to play yourself in and out of form. Ollie Pope can vouch for the latter.

His dismissal for 11 runs on day one in Dharamsala, running past a googly from Kuldeep Yadav, takes his series tally to 296. It ranks him as the third-highest run-scorer in the England team, with a just-about-respectable average of 32.88. The problem is that 196 came in one single knock.

Hell of a knock, though. Hall-of-fame worthy. The likes of which India coach Rahul Dravid said he had never seen before, in challenging conditions against a high-calibre bowling attack.

Channelling chaos with a flurry of conventional and reverse sweeps, Pope instigated the mother of all heists in Hyderabad, turning a first-innings deficit of 190 into a 28-run win. It was a stellar return for a player who had missed last summer's final three Ashes Tests because of a right shoulder dislocation that required surgery. Unfortunately, for England and their vice-captain, things have gone south ever since.

That same chaos has now turned on Pope. Two 23s in Visakhapatnam were followed by 39 and 3 in Rajkot. The real series average killer/conversation starter came in the fourth Test at Ranchi with two ducks - his first pair in a first-class career 94 appearances old at the time.

The nature of Thursday's dismissal added to the sense Pope's first Test masterpiece was not simply "one of a kind" but an outlier. Maybe this was all just the 72 false shots in that 278-ball epic coming home to roost?

For the fifth time in this series, he arrived at the crease to a fifty-plus platform, thanks to Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett. His first delivery was nudged just beyond short leg's reach. Kuldeep beat him for the first time with the fourth, sliding one past the edge from over the wicket. As literal a warning shot across the bow a left-arm wrist spinner could deliver.

Pope missed out on a rank short one from Kuldeep spinning down leg, guiding it straight to the man around the corner. Then, he saw what would have been a first, calming boundary cut off by debutant Devdutt Padikkal in the deep. When Pope dabbed his 23rd ball to short fine leg, Dhruv Jurel called out to Kuldeep from behind the stumps.

"He'll advance - advance out [of his crease]," said Jurel, in Hindi to ensure it went over Pope's head, before Kuldeep spun one past his outside edge. Jurel whipped off the bails with deserved smugness.

It was a sharp bit of game awareness from the wicketkeeper, but you did not need his nous to see it coming. Though more controlled with today's start, Pope's back catalogue has enough frenetic intros to rival Led Zeppelin, albeit with fewer hits. And his desperation to get at Kuldeep after scoring just 3 off 8 deliveries off his bowling ultimately left him dazed and confused.

"Ollie Pope is someone who cannot stay still at the crease for a long time," Kuldeep explained at stumps, with four other batters in his back pocket. "His style is such that he steps out a lot and tries to dominate the spinners by hitting them down the ground.

"So when you have bowled three dot balls, you think about what he would try on the next ball. It's a keeper's job to convey what the batter is looking to do. Sarfaraz (Khan) was also helping from short leg. And he had stepped out early anyway, so it was easy for me to change [my plan]."

Just last week, Brendon McCullum discussed Pope's issues as a sketchy starter, explaining it as the 26-year-old's propensity to map out an innings in his mind "before he goes out there." It's not so much that he bats by numbers, but he is perhaps wary of hitting certain checkpoints, which likely pertains to a certain amount of runs after a certain number of deliveries. It is something Pope is aware of and actively looking to address.

"Ollie has his own little things he is trying to improve," assistant coach Marcus Trescothick said. "Getting into an innings is always challenging over here, and facing high-quality spin. That is part of his game he is looking to improve on."

Six years into a 42-cap Test career, the undercurrent of Pope learning on the job remains.

It began when he was thrust into the Test arena aged 20. Despite earning the call-up through big runs for Surrey at No.6, he debuted at No. 4 in 2018 and found himself at the crease in the ninth, 13th and 12th overs in his first three innings despite having never previously batted before the 20th over in first-class cricket.

His ascension to three came off the back of a phone call to Ben Stokes early in the 2022 summer, after seeing the news that Joe Root would be moving down to No. 4 via a graphic from the Barmy Army on social media. He had never batted as high before and, broadly, it has been a success. He averages 41.05 when carded at first drop - a figure which includes two occasions when a nightwatcher has bumped him to No.4.

In that time, Stokes chose him as his deputy, despite Pope's official leadership experience being limited to a single County Championship match leading Surrey against Glamorgan at the end of the 2021 season. But the way in which Pope had grown in stature within the dressing room, allied with a willingness to put himself in tough positions, such as batting three or taking the gloves for two Tests in Pakistan last winter, for the good of the team, told Stokes all he needed to know.

Unquestionably, Pope is a well-respected, high-ceiling player steadily improving a middling overall average that reads 34.58 at the time of writing. He is currently outperforming the century-cap trio of Root, Stokes and Jonny Bairstow, who all fell within 13 deliveries with the score stuck at 175.

But as the team seeks evolution, Pope is primed to lead them into the new era. And he will need to figure out how to do that sooner rather than later, all while trying to curb the early tetchiness preventing him from realising his full potential as a Test batter. Only when he figures out the latter will the former come to fruition.