England batter Ollie Pope heaped praises on Joe Root, and stated that he looked forward to acquiring batting lessons from the team’s former captain Joe Root after both players scored hundreds in the side’s first-innings in the second Test against New Zealand.
Ben Stoke’s side secured an impressive five-wicket win in the first Test at Lord’s, courtesy of a brilliant fourth-innings hundred from Root. The 31-year-old ensured that the side had a glorious start to their home summer.
The hosts put New Zealand in to bat on Day 1 of the second Test at Trent Bridge, but were at the receiving end of Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell’s brilliance yet again, with the two scoring timely hundreds to guide the Black Caps to a daunting first-innings total of 553.
England, having endured troubled times as a batting unit, especially with the top-three, lost Zak Crawley early before Alex Lees and Pope laid the foundation for a solid response. While Lees fell for 67 after a 141-run second-wicket stand, Pope went on to score his second Test hundred – his first since January 2020 – in just his third-ever first-class innings at No.3.
Pope added 187 for the third wicket with Root, striking 13 fours and three sixes, before being dismissed by Trent Boult for 145. It was a refreshing comeback for the 24-year-old, who was overlooked for the 2021-22 Ashes tour. He expressed the relief of getting to a second Test hundred in a 25-match career so far, wherein his average stands at a lowly 30.62.
“It hasn’t been the easiest ride over the last year or so. A few tough tours away didn’t play a massive amount last summer. Once I got over the line, it was a relief but I was just so happy. You have to take in those moments, which is something I’ve come to realize over the last year or so,”
Pope was quoted by Cricbuzz.
Meanwhile, Root extended his run-scoring juggernaut with his 27th Test ton – a whopping 10th since the start of 2021 – and ended up with a fluent 176, which included 26 fours and a jaw-dropping reverse-scoop six off Tim Southee over the slips.
The Yorkshireman, who had become the second Englishman to get to the 10,000-run mark after Sir Alastair Cook during his Lord’s hundred, surpassed Sunil Gavaskar’s tally of 10,122 Test runs to climb further up in the all-time leading run scorers charts.
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Root celebrated Pope’s success with equal joy, embracing the youngster as he got to his hundred with a brace towards the sweeper cover. Pope labelled the former England captain as the country’s “greatest ever”, and looks forward to gaining batting lessons from the modern-day great.
“We’re seeing England’s greatest ever. You don’t want to necessarily replicate what he does but try to learn as much as I can off of him.
Whether that’s him throwing balls at you for 20 minutes at the end of the session, which he’ll always happily do, and if he sees something – even from the mindset point of view, trying to pick his brains as much as I possibly can, especially while he’s in this amazing run of form,”
Pope said.
England eventually managed 539 in their first innings, with Boult’s 5/106 ensuring that the visitors managed a slender 14-run lead in the first innings.
The New Zealanders were 224/7 by the end of Day 4 on the back of fifties from Will Young and Devon Conway, setting it up for a gripping final-day finish.
