“It is about tightening some loose screws…”: England’s Ollie Pope on road ahead for Three Lions

England batter Ollie Pope said that his team will continue with its attacking approach in Test cricket; however, he admitted that the team has to tighten “some loose screws”.

England’s highly-attacking, positive and result-oriented ‘Bazball’ approach, which was coined after their head coach Brendon McCullum, under the leadership of skipper Ben Stokes, received a major jolt as England failed to build on momentum of a 28-run win in the first Test and fumbled the whole series against India by 4-1 despite some moments of promise, notably by Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Ben Duckett and the inexperienced spin duo of Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir.

The largely-young Indian batting line-up, consisting of experienced skipper Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, and Ravindra Jadeja, outbatted England by miles in a series that promised to be a mouth-watering contest between two incredible batting sides. This loss came after success against New Zealand (home and away), Pakistan (away), Australia (at home), and South Africa (at home) which saw the team not loose a Test series. The Kiwi series away from home and home Ashes ended in draws.

Speaking to Sky Sports News, Pope said on Tuesday, “We still want to be a team where we are positive. We have had some good success over here and just because we have lost this series against India does not mean we need to reinvent the wheel.”

“For us now, it is about tightening a few loose screws–that’s how I would describe it. We can take a lot of confidence in what we have done over the last two years or so.”

“But we also realise we want to be the best team in the world and to do that we need to be better at what we have been doing over the last two years or so,” he concluded.

Pope said that in a few small ways, England “can really hone in and become a better team” so that it can compete with other teams in overseas conditions.

“We still want to go about that positive style of cricket and that freedom. From a batting point of view, each batter has had their own success in their own positions. Each batter is smart enough to know exactly how they need to play and to put about an innings and go score a hundred as consistently as they can. That is our next step as a batting unit, to be as consistent as we possibly can, and if we can all fire at similar times then hopefully, we can be a pretty dangerous side,” he concluded.

England’s next Test assignments will be against West Indies and Sri Lanka at home during the Test summer.

Schedule: July 10-14: First Test vs West Indies (Lord’s)
July 18-22: Second Test vs West Indies (Trent Bridge)
July 26-30: Third Test vs West India (Edgbaston)
August 21-25: First Test vs Sri Lanka (Old Trafford)
August 29-September 2: Second Test vs Sri Lanka (Lord’s)
September 6-10: Third Test vs Sri Lanka (The Oval).

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