Ollie Pope Cements Claim to England Cricket's Number Three Spot with Impressive 90 Against Lions

It is difficult to know how much of the English team's warm-up game will prove meaningful when their Ashes series battle kicks off 10km away at the Perth venue on the coming Friday – no distance in space or time but light years away in importance and mood – but if it achieved nothing more than boosting Ollie Pope's confidence, that on its own has rendered the exercise valuable.

The English side's number three batsman – this fact is undoubtedly totally certain – built on his initial innings century by adding a further 90 in the second innings, and the truly impressive was not so much the quantity of scored runs but the way in which they were scored. On occasion the young batsman looked dominant, smashing a dozen fours and a two of maximums, timing the ball perfectly but with fierce intent.

This was just a practice match versus a Lions team that employed fully 11 bowlers across a contest played in before a few dozen of onlookers in a open field, but it was nonetheless very impressive. To note, the England team, needing of 202 after the Lions declared their follow-on innings on 251 for six, succeeded by a margin of five wickets once Jamie Smith hurried the team over the winning target with a stream of fours and sixes.

Crawley and Ben Duckett, the other two significant first-innings' performers, both fell short in the follow-up, while Root made several more points – 31 on this time – but was not enormously more dominant, then being puzzled and accordingly bowled by Jacks. Brook suffered an same outcome soon afterwards.

Shoaib Bashir – who concluded the fixture having bowled 12 bowling spells for both teams – will have found some of the strokes he confronted pretty challenging. His initial six deliveries against the Lions conceded 56, with Ben McKinney taking advantage to bowling that if not exactly poor was surely not overly dangerous.

By the conclusion the sixth over of that period, the English side's remaining three pitchers had given away almost precisely the identical number of points – 57 – from 15, though the bowler became a little less giving later on, giving up 27 from his last six. He claimed a single wicket, holding a sharp, low catch, leaning to his right side, to end Bethell's batting stint for 70, facing 80 deliveries.

Bethell, compensating for scoring merely three in the first innings, was a member of three half-centurions in the Lions team's leading batsmen. McKinney's performances from opening batsman were more reliable than those of their No 3: he scored 66 in their initial knock and went two better in their follow-up, using 61 deliveries to reach his 50 runs, with five fours and two maximums, the pair against Bashir's's bowling. Bethell made 68 then a mis-hit to Stokes at cover position, who took a low catch at shin level.

Cox exhibited similar reliability, and built on his first-innings 53 with an additional 57, at about a run per delivery. There were several exceptionally beautiful strokes en route, including a straight drive and a pull from consecutive Carse balls to attain his half century.

Following his absence from the first day of this match with a stomach upset and made just the least significant of inputs to the second day, Brydon Carse delivered brilliantly when eventually provided the shot, with Ben McKinney and Cox among his three scalps.

This report could change