🔗 Share this article Ollie Pope Cements Position to England's No 3 Role with Bold 90 Against Lions It is difficult to gauge how much of England's warm-up fixture will be remotely relevant when their Ashes series campaign begins a short distance away at the Perth venue on Friday – no distance in space or time but ages away in import and atmosphere – but if it managed nothing more than boosting Pope's confidence, that by itself has made the endeavor worthwhile. The English side's No 3 – this fact is surely totally certain – followed his first-innings ton by scoring another 90 in the follow-up innings, and what was impressive was less about the total of runs but the way in which they were accumulated. On occasion the 27-year-old appeared commanding, smashing a dozen fours and a couple of maximums, hitting the ball beautifully but with aggressive intent. It was only a exhibition game versus a Lions side that used exactly 11 pitchers throughout a match played in amid a handful of people in a open field, but it was nonetheless hugely praiseworthy. To note, England, chasing of 202 following the Lions declared their second innings on 251 for six, succeeded by five wickets after Jamie Smith sped the team past the winning target with a series of fours and sixes. Joe Root scored a further 31 points but was not hugely convincing during the English team's preparatory. Crawley and Ben Duckett, the other two major first-innings' performers, both were dismissed in the second knock, while Root made further points – 31 on this instance – but was not significantly more convincing, then being confused and duly bowled by Will Jacks. Brook suffered an same end a little later. Bashir – who ended the match having delivered 12 overs for both teams – will have found a portion of the strokes he faced quite hostile. His initial six deliveries against the Lions conceded 56, with McKinney taking advantage to pitching that if not exactly wayward was surely not very dangerous. At the end the sixth of those overs, the English side's three other pitchers had conceded nearly exactly the same total of points – 57 – from 15, though Bashir turned a slightly less giving in time, allowing 27 from his final six. He claimed one wicket, taking a clever, low-down grab, diving to his right side, to finish Jacob Bethell's knock for 70, off 80 deliveries. Jacob Bethell, making up for achieving merely three runs in the opening knock, was a member of three fifty-scorers in the Lions' leading batsmen. McKinney's returns from opener were more reliable than those of their No 3: he made 66 in their initial knock and went two better in their second innings, facing 61 deliveries to reach his 50 runs, with five boundaries and two sixes, both against Bashir's's deliveries. Bethell made 68 then a mis-hit to Stokes at cover position, who took a low grab at low down. Jordan Cox showed similar consistency, and backed up his first-innings 53 with another 57, at slightly more than a scoring rate of one. He played several remarkably beautiful strokes on the way, such as a straight drive and a pull against back-to-back Carse balls to reach his 50 runs. After missing the opening day of this game with a illness and provided just the least significant of efforts to the second day, Brydon Carse delivered superbly when eventually given the opportunity, with McKinney and Cox part of his three wickets. The coverage may be updated