{"id":288231,"date":"2025-11-16T12:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T12:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/288231\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T12:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T12:23:07","slug":"the-ashes-ollie-pope-respects-england-giving-vice-captaincy-to-harry-brook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/288231\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ashes: Ollie Pope respects England giving vice-captaincy to Harry Brook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ollie Pope said he respects England’s decision to replace him with Harry Brook as vice-captain for the Ashes series.<\/p>\n

Pope has been deputy for most of Ben Stokes’ three years as Test skipper, stepping up to lead on five occasions – including England’s last Test against India in July.<\/p>\n

But the Surrey batter was demoted when the squad for the tour of Australia was named in September.<\/p>\n

Director of cricket Rob Key explained the move by saying Brook, who became England’s limited-overs captain in the summer, is a “better leader”.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pope said: “If they think that’s the right thing for the team going forward, and obviously Brooky captaining the one-day stuff and the T20 stuff as well, that’s absolutely fine by me and I respect the decision they’ve made.”<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old was speaking after making scores of 100 and 90 against England Lions in England’s only Ashes warm-up match in Perth.<\/p>\n

It was Pope’s first time in the middle since playing in the County Championship two months ago.<\/p>\n

He had a mixed summer for England, scoring hundreds in his first two innings – against Zimbabwe and India – then passing 50 only once in his next eight.<\/p>\n

Pope said he has “worked” on “a couple of little technical bits” of his game, without revealing the full extent.<\/p>\n

“Just smoothing out a few areas,” he said.<\/p>\n

With debate focusing on the quality and quantity of England’s Ashes warm-up fixtures, Pope was one of the players who took full advantage of the three days at Lilac Hill.<\/p>\n

“I always take a bit away from warm-up games. Even if I miss out, there’s always something to take from it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I’m someone who likes time in the middle just to get myself ready for a series. I found it really beneficial.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ollie Pope said he respects England’s decision to replace him with Harry Brook as vice-captain for the Ashes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-288231","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\/288231","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=288231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}