It is hard to know how much of England\u2019s warm-up game will be remotely relevant when their Ashes campaign begins 10km away at Perth Stadium on Friday. It is no distance in space or time but light years away in import and atmosphere and if it achieved nothing more than boosting Ollie Pope\u2019s confidence, that alone has made the exercise worthwhile.<\/p>\n
England\u2019s No 3 \u2013 his place in the first XI is now surely certain \u2013 followed his first-innings century against the Lions by scoring another 90 in the second. What was impressive was not so much the number of runs but the manner in which they were scored. At times the 27-year-old looked imperious, hitting a dozen fours and a pair of sixes, timing the ball sweetly but with devilish intent.<\/p>\n
It was only a friendly against opponents that used 11 bowlers in a match played in front of an audience of dozens in a public park, but it was still hugely impressive. For the record, England, set 202 after the Lions declared their second innings on 251 for six, won by five wickets after Jamie Smith sped the team across the finish line with an impatient stream of boundaries.<\/p>\n
Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the two other big first-innings successes, failed in the second knock while Joe Root scored several more runs \u2013 31 on this occasion \u2013 but was not enormously more convincing, before being bemused and duly bowled by Will Jacks. Harry Brook met an identical fate soon afterwards.<\/p>\n
Though given England\u2019s opponents, Shoaib Bashir \u2013 who bowled 12 overs for each side \u2013 will have found some of the batting he faced pretty hostile. His first six overs against the Lions went for 56, with Ben McKinney in particular tucking in to bowling that if not exactly loose was certainly not very threatening.<\/p>\n
At the end of the sixth of those overs, England\u2019s three other bowlers had conceded almost the same number of runs \u2013 57 \u2013 from 15, though Bashir improved in conceding 27 from his remaining six. He took one wicket, taking a smart return catch, falling to his right, to end Jacob Bethell\u2019s innings for 70, off 80 balls.<\/p>\n
Joe Root clocked up another 31 runs but was not hugely convincing during England\u2019s warm-up. Photograph: Gareth Copley\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Bethell, making up for managing three in the first innings, was one of three half-centurions in the Lions\u2019 top four. McKinney\u2019s returns from opener were more consistent: he scored 66 in their first innings and went two better in their second, taking 61 deliveries over his half-century, with five fours and two sixes, both off Bashir\u2019s bowling, before he mis-hit to Ben Stokes at cover, who took a stooping catch at ankle height.<\/p>\n
Jordan Cox showed similar consistency and followed his first-innings 53 with another 57, at just over a run a ball. There were some outstandingly handsome shots on the way, including a straight drive and a pull off consecutive Brydon Carse deliveries to reach his half-century. Having missed the first day with a stomach upset and made only the most minor of contributions to the second Carse bowled excellently when finally given the chance, with McKinney and Cox among his three wickets.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Preparation all but complete, Carse is looking forward to the series and said England were now perfectly primed. \u201cIf you look across the group of seamers, they\u2019ve all got a decent amount of overs in and some of the batters have spent time at the crease,\u201d he said of this warm-up game.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first Test might be a little bit different to preparation, but this week was all about getting miles in their legs. It\u2019s exciting. We\u2019ve got a group of six bowlers who, whatever dynamic we go with, will relish those conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe guys have all had a good three days here, some guys have been out here a bit longer and some guys have been in New Zealand, so the group of players have had a lot of cricket over the last couple of months. Everyone\u2019s ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is hard to know how much of England\u2019s warm-up game will be remotely relevant when their Ashes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-286360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}