Ollie Pope Strengthens Claim to England's Number Three Spot with Bold 90 Against Lions

It is hard to gauge how much of the English team's warm-up match will be remotely meaningful when their Ashes series campaign starts a short distance away at the Perth venue on Friday – a brief gap in geography or duration but light years away in significance and mood – but if it accomplished only enhancing Pope's self-belief, that by itself has rendered the endeavor beneficial.

England's No 3 – that much is surely totally clear – built on his initial innings hundred by scoring an additional 90 in the second innings, and what was notable was not so much the quantity of scored runs but the style in which they were made. At times the player appeared imperious, hitting a dozen boundaries and a two of maximums, timing the ball beautifully but with devilish determination.

This was merely a practice match against a Lions squad that employed exactly 11 pitchers during a match held in amid a small group of spectators in a open field, but it was nevertheless hugely praiseworthy. For the record, England, chasing of 202 once the Lions ended their second innings on 251 for six, won by five wickets when Smith raced the team past the finish line with a series of boundaries.

Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the two other significant first-innings performers, both were dismissed in the second innings, while Root added several more points – 31 on this time – but was far from more assured, before being confused and subsequently dismissed by Jacks. Brook suffered an similar end soon afterwards.

Shoaib Bashir – who finished the game having delivered 12 overs for both teams – will have encountered part of the strokes he faced rather hostile. His opening six deliveries versus the Lions conceded 56, with Ben McKinney feasting to deliveries that if not completely wayward was certainly far from threatening.

By the conclusion the sixth spell of that period, England's three other bowlers had conceded almost precisely the equivalent amount of points – 57 – from 15, though the bowler became a somewhat less generous in time, allowing 27 from his final six. He claimed a single wicket, taking a smart, diving grab, leaning to his right, to finish Jacob Bethell's batting stint for 70, off 80 deliveries.

Bethell, redeeming achieving only three runs in the first innings, was a member of three players with fifties in the Lions' top order. McKinney's returns from opening batsman were more reliable than those of their No 3: he scored 66 in their first batting effort and improved by two in their second innings, taking 61 balls for his half-century, with five and a couple maximums, the pair against Bashir's's bowling. Bethell made 68 prior to a poor shot to Ben Stokes at cover, who held a low catch at shin level.

Cox showed like reliability, and backed up his initial innings' 53 with an additional 57, at just over a scoring rate of one. He produced several outstandingly handsome shots on the way, including a drive down the ground and a pull from back-to-back Carse deliveries to attain his 50 runs.

Following his absence from the initial day of this game with a stomach upset and provided only the least significant of inputs to the follow-up, Carse bowled brilliantly when eventually given the opportunity, with Ben McKinney and Jordan Cox part of his three scalps.

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