Replacing Pope with Bethell is the latest stage of long-running speculation around England’s number-three position.<\/p>\n
Pope’s highest score in six innings on this Ashes tour is 46, extending his run of eight Tests against Australia without a half-century.<\/p>\n
In the 27-year-old’s past seven Tests since making a century against India at Headingley in July, he averages 24.38.<\/p>\n
Overall, he averages 34.55 in 64 Tests. This is the first time he has been left out of a Test since the 2022 tour of West Indies.<\/p>\n
The Surrey man has been under pressure since Bethell made his Test debut in New Zealand at the end of last year, when the left-hander made three half-centuries in as many matches.<\/p>\n
However, Bethell has endured a stop-start year since that breakthrough tour of New Zealand.<\/p>\n
He has played only three first-class matches in the past year, one of which was the fifth Test against India at The Oval, when he made scores of six and five.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old did make 71 for England Lions against Australia A in Brisbane earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Speculation that Bethell may come in for the start of the Ashes series grew when Pope was replaced as vice-captain by Harry Brook when the England squad was announced in September.<\/p>\n
Instead, Pope has become the first selection victim of the failed bid to regain the urn.<\/p>\n
“He’s not going to be the only one who’s disappointed in the dressing room with how things have gone,” said Stokes. “Being 3-0 down, it’s a tough place to be on a trip like this.<\/p>\n
“There’s going to be a lot of disappointment within the dressing room from everyone who’s in there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Replacing Pope with Bethell is the latest stage of long-running speculation around England’s number-three position. Pope’s highest score…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-333145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}