🔗 Share this article Pope Cements Position to England Cricket's Number Three Spot with Bold 90 Against Lions It's difficult to gauge how relevant of the English team's preparatory game will be remotely meaningful when their Ashes battle begins a short distance away at the Perth venue on the coming Friday – no distance in geography or duration but worlds away in import and atmosphere – but if it accomplished nothing more than enhancing Pope's confidence, that alone has rendered the effort worthwhile. England's number three batsman – that much is surely absolutely established – followed his first-innings hundred by scoring an additional 90 in the second innings, and the truly impressive was less about the quantity of runs but the style in which they were made. Periodically the young batsman looked imperious, hitting a dozen boundaries and a pair of maximums, connecting with the ball perfectly but with fierce intent. This was only a friendly versus a England Lions squad that employed a total of 11 pitchers during a contest played in before a small group of spectators in a local ground, but it was nevertheless very impressive. For the record, the England team, needing of 202 once the Lions closed their follow-on innings on 251 for six, triumphed by a margin of five wickets when Jamie Smith raced the team across the winning target with a flurry of fours and sixes. Joe Root clocked up a further 31 runs but was less than impressive during the English team's warm-up. Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the two other significant first-innings' successes, both fell short in the second innings, while Joe Root scored several more points – 31 on this instance – but was not enormously more dominant, before being bemused and accordingly out by Will Jacks. Harry Brook experienced an same outcome a little later. Bashir – who concluded the fixture having delivered 12 overs for each side – will have encountered a portion of the batting he faced pretty aggressive. His initial six overs versus the Lions went for 56, with Ben McKinney feasting to pitching that if not exactly loose was certainly far from dangerous. At the end the sixth over of those deliveries, England's other bowlers had conceded nearly exactly the identical number of runs – 57 – from 15, though the bowler became a slightly less generous in time, giving up 27 from his remaining six. He claimed a single wicket, taking a clever, low-down catch, falling to his right side, to end Jacob Bethell's batting stint for 70, off 80 balls. Bethell, redeeming achieving merely three runs in the initial innings, was among a trio of players with fifties in the Lions team's top four. Ben McKinney's performances from opener were steadier than those from their number three: he scored 66 in their first innings and improved by two in their second, facing 61 balls to reach his half-century, with five boundaries and a couple maximums, both from Bashir's's pitching. Bethell reached 68 before a mis-hit to Stokes at cover, who took a bending catch at shin level. Jordan Cox exhibited comparable steadiness, and built on his initial innings' 53 with another 57, at about a scoring rate of one. He played several exceptionally handsome hits on the way, such as a drive down the ground and a hook against consecutive Brydon Carse deliveries to attain his fifty. Having missed the first day of this game with a illness and made just the most minor of efforts to the second day, Carse pitched superbly when at last given the chance, with McKinney and Jordan Cox part of his three wickets. The update could change