For Crawley and Pope, the struggle gets real

It was in Multan, ahead of the first Test of 2024's tour of Pakistan, that Zak Crawley, as he presented Ollie Pope with his 50th cap, joked that the pair run Clapham, referencing their adopted south London neighbourhood. Which is funny because no one runs Clapham. The whole point of Clapham - especially if you're in your mid-20s, like Crawley and Pope - is to give you the impression you run Clapham.

Really, Clapham runs you. Enticing you for the early years of the rest of your life - a 2021 census revealed 59% of residents are aged between 20 and 39 - as it did for Pope and Crawley. With it comes a false sense of agency and a flawed understanding of adulthood.

You end up doing what you had been doing at university, but for more money. And thus the highs feel greater, making you square that you've held on to joy for this long so you'll never grow old, until one day you do and the place spits you out for the next crop of wide-eyed, energy-filled vessels. Before you know it, you're in a dogfight with the place to stay relevant. To stay young. To stay put. And only when you give into the grind - that, maybe, you're too old for Infernos and Café Sol, and the common is actually a great way to get your 10,000 steps - does it keep you around.

On Thursday, north of the river, both SW residents were in a domain that, as vice-captain and senior opener, is very much their own. But one which was playing awkward and unreliable underfoot, squeezing them to offer more against an Indian attack making their beds at the Home of Cricket. Both struggling in very different ways. One by choice as a team built on their kind of stroke-making and effervescence deliberately fizzled towards a quietly respectable 251 for 4 on day one of this Lord's Test.

Test cricket has been kind and cruel to both, though crueler to Crawley than Pope, and not without good reason. Collectively, though, they have been lucky.

Both have more caps than Jonathan Trott. By the end of the series, Crawley (57 and counting) will have more than Darren Gough (58), and Pope (59) will pass Graeme Swann (60). And to already know they will leapfrog modern greats without fighting against ingrained, unflattering reputations acquired so deep into a Test career is a luxury. One afforded to an opener and No. 3 who benefit from a never-more-forgiving England set-up. Which, all told, has only compounded the scrutiny on them and worn patience thin, even with the acceptance they occupy challenging positions for batters in this country. Though even that makes it worse.

Crawley's 43-ball 18 was basically an AI-generated innings of a waywardly dominant player at his worst. The control percentage was 51.2 (playing a false shot to 21 of the deliveries he faced) and spoke of the Russian Roulette nature of his stay, except with bullets in three of the six chambers. By contrast, fellow opener Ben Duckett 'boasted' a control percentage of 60 during his 40 balls.

The sixth over of the day provided a snapshot of the wrestle between Crawley and his game that seems to have emerged since a calm 65 set England's first Test chase in motion. Against Akash Deep from the Nursery End, he adopted four different starting points and triggers; a foot outside, a foot inside, one impulsive charge, another pre-meditated shuffle and dart which almost cost him leg stump.

The positive spin on that is Crawley was trying to give Deep something to think about, aiming to unsettle his rhythm, encroach on his radar. But at 1 off 18, the flailing arms were of a man trying to keep his head above water, not swimming meaningfully against the tide.

There was no real consolation that he could do little about his dismissal, managing to edge a pearler down the slope from Nitish Kumar Reddy after living so charmed. Lucky to still be there, unlucky to have nicked it. The delivery justified the intent behind the approach. You're going to get a good one, and he got a great one to end a bad, bad knock.

For Pope, however, this was a peculiar riddle of guts and bunkering down sandwiched between being dropped first ball - it would have been a hell of a catch from Shubman Gill at second gully - and getting out first ball after tea, inexplicably driving at a delivery too short. That was the 17th time out of the 62 where Pope has resumed an innings at the start of a session and been dismissed in its first 10 deliveries.

For context, Root - unbeaten at lunch on 24, tea at 54 and overnight on 99 - has "done a Pope" just 15 out of 126 times since Pope's debut in August 2018. That, really, is the reliability England fans crave from their No. 3, without even yearning for the qualities of Root who everyone accepts is now done with the role.

And yet, amid familiar twitches outside off stump where, wicket aside, he was scoreless from 17 of 19 deliveries, was clearly a bit of caution. He was only beaten by six of the 75 balls in that region. The 87 he took to reach 30 was the second slowest after a 108-ball effort in against New Zealand in December 2018. There was struggle, but it was not shirked.

Restraint came to the fore in the middle session, which he and Root saw out for just 70 runs in 24 overs. During the 41st over, after Root had almost played Akash onto his stumps, Pope was in the zone at the non-striker's end shadowing a charge down the pitch. It was not all that dramatic, akin to the way one might shimmy to leap off a hill, the express intention to scare a friend by momentarily listening to the mischievous voice in your head.

Three overs later, Pope tried it off Akash, failing to work a single to the leg side. Back it went in the box. Perhaps surprisingly given how often members of this team use the charge to momentarily relieve pressure, like a boxer windmilling punches when they are backed into a corner. For Pope, this was growth.

"I did it once - it can mess up the lengths a little bit," Pope said. "But for me, I think it's something I've not done as much over the last year or so, mainly because I feel like I'm just trusting my defence a little bit more. I don't feel I need to try and hit them off their lengths the whole time."

Nipping conditions curbed that enthusiasm. Even outright, he kept schtum against Bumrah, at one point facing 28 deliveries of a five-over spell in which Root faced just two. Of the 42 deliveries Bumrah bowled when both were at the crease, Pope faced 32 to Root's 10, but only managed two more runs than Root. Not that this was the plan, of course. This was a man who usually flies too close to the sun realising his limits.

"I don't think that would be a smart conscious choice of me," Pope joked when asked if he was shielding Root. "He just hit a pretty good area and I guess with the field was up I couldn't sneak down to the other end. Root's good at nicking the ones like that.

"You've just always got to be switched on, so it wasn't a conscious choice, but I was happy to try and absorb the pressure."

It's tempting to say this was a teaser of a new Pope, but that idea was shot to earth by a narrative-skewing dismissal that clipped England's wings, too.

Having toughed it out, he should have gone on. And there is something so typically Pope that having started the series with a century that seemed to lock in his place for this series and the Ashes to come, he is now averaging 36.40 from five innings.

The dressing room will appreciate Pope's pluck, but the public will only see another start spurned. For Crawley, however, the fight to justify his place gets a little harder. To stay, to remain. A player that has thrived off the environment no longer seems to be thriving. It might be time to move.