The statistics show Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes need a rethink – here’s my easy solution

October 25, 2024 5:01 pm(Updated 7:13 pm)

RAWALPINDI — Ollie Pope is expected to be in England’s squad for the upcoming tour of New Zealand when it is named at the end of this final Test. But for the good of the team and the player himself it would be wise for the Bazball brains trust to have a rethink.

Pope’s harrowing series here in Pakistan came to a swift end on a chaotic second evening in Rawalpindi when he was dismissed for one by Noman Ali during a passage of play that saw England’s hopes in this decider start to circle the drain.

The delivery that caught Pope’s edge and flew to slip was a good one. Yet that mattered little given this has been a tour when his grip on the pivotal No 3 position has significantly loosened.

There are a whole tranche of statistics with which you can damn Pope. Averaging 11 in this series is one. His average of 26 since his match-winning innings of 196 against India at Hyderabad in January is another. Since then he has just five scores above 30 in 23 innings, including 10 in single figures.

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Yet the killer statistic is the fact that in 92 Test innings so far he has been dismissed within 20 balls 37 times. If you move the search parameter to within 30 deliveries that figure jumps to 49.

For a player who is occupying such a key position in the batting line-up, it just isn’t good enough. Indeed, it makes the times when he has delivered, those six centuries since he was brought back into the team at the start of the Bazball era, seem like outliers.

There’s no doubt Pope is a talented player. But he is wholly unsuited to batting at three.

The problem for England, though, is that there are few, if any, ready-made alternatives to Pope in that position.

It’s the reason why coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes asked him to fill it when they first took over in the summer of 2022. For a while, it seemed to work.

But Pope’s current run of form is making his position untenable. No doubt he was not helped by taking on the captaincy for four Tests, including the first here in Pakistan, when Stokes was injured.

The time has come, though, to have another think about a position that has troubled England ever since Jonathan Trott played his last Test almost a decade ago.

McCullum and Stokes have shown commendable loyalty to the players they believe in, most notably to Zak Crawley when the opener went through a similar run of form to what Pope is experiencing now before last year’s Ashes series.

They have also proven to be absolutely ruthless when deciding someone’s time is up. Just ask Alex Lees, Ollie Robinson, Jonny Bairstow or Ben Foakes.

So if not Pope, who to fill the No 3 role in this team for New Zealand and beyond?

The answer to this particular puzzle probably has to come from within the current squad. Joe Root, perhaps the best suited to it and who scored 262 at three two Tests ago in Multan when opener Ben Duckett came in lower down the order after injury, has never fancied first drop.

England would also be loath to force their best batter to play in a position he doesn’t want to occupy.

Harry Brook could do it but why move him from the No 5 position from which he has had such a fantastic start to his Test career.

The uncapped Jordan Cox, the spare batter on this tour, isn’t a great option either given he bats at four in county cricket.

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The answer is Stokes, whose own batting has gone off the boil recently and for whom the challenge of filling this problem position might be attractive.

Jamie Smith’s emergence means that England have another batter who can either perform rescue acts from lower down the order or take the game on if England are on top – a role Stokes has fulfilled on numerous occasions throughout his 11 years in the team.

Stokes also has a good record of batting at the top of the order in Test cricket. Indeed, he averages 98 in the four innings he has either opened or batted No3. This is albeit an exceedingly small sample size but why not give him a shot?

Moving Stokes up would also free up a slot in the middle order for a new batter to bedded into the team. This is likely to be Cox, whose county record has seen him singled out as the next best player outside of this current group.

For New Zealand, though, England would also need to bring in another spare batter given that Smith is set to miss part of that three-match series when he returns home for the birth of his first child. Somerset prodigy James Rew, 20, is one player who is highly rated and on England’s radar.

But the best option might be Rew’s county teammate Tom Banton, who played 20 white-ball games for England earlier in his career but at the age of 25 has had an impressive County Championship season in which he averaged 50 and scored seven 50-plus scores.

New Zealand is likely too soon for Banton, who sustained an ankle injury at the end of the county season.

This is a plan that would make sense if England do bite the bullet and drop Pope. But it is debatable whether McCullum, Stokes and director of cricket Rob Key are at that point just yet.