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Friday, March 29 2024
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Cricket

Ollie Pope – The Rising England Cricketer From Surrey

ollie pope ECB Cricket Star
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Ollie Pope is all of 24 years, but do not let his tender age fool you into believing that he has insufficient experience. Pope, who has displayed some spectacular cricketing performances thus far, attributes his time spent in Australia to being able to accelerate his career as a professional cricketer. He used to play Grade cricket in Sydney in Australia for Team Campbelltown-Camden. It was there that he snatched attention by scoring a whopping 997 runs across 23 games.

In England, Pope had scored 684 runs at a massive average of 85.50 runs for the leaders of the County Championship, namely Surrey, which includes three solid centuries and an unbeaten top score of 158. He made his debut playing for Surrey against his local cricket club Middlesex in August 2017, making a meager 25 runs. The game had to be halted abruptly by the umpires then, due to some unavoidable conditions.

Apart from playing such good knocks, Ollie Pope is the messiest person in the squad, says English opener Jason Roy in an interview to Betway.

” I roomed with Ollie Pope once. Horrendous. That was tough going. He was a messy puppy, for sure. He took over a lot of the room,” Jason Roy said on Betway.

Interestingly, the news of Pope’s selection for the England national cricket team came as a surprise, or as like to describe it as “out of the blue”. He came to know of his England selection when Ed Smith the national selector called him up one Sunday. Not many people knew about Ollie Pope back then, which adds to the surprise factor. In fact, to quote Pope verbatim, “I was on the way to play for Surrey in a T20 at Essex… I had a flat tire the day before, so had to get a lift with a mate… I was in the car on my own and saw Ed Smith’s name pop up, and had an idea what it may be… From that moment I hardly remember the conversation, just that it was a good one.” Once the news about his selection spread like wildfire, there was a massive spike in his count of followers across all the social media platforms.

However, the selection of Pope by the England & Wales Cricket Board faced stiff criticism, since he had not yet acquired enough experience back then. And he too has had his share of poor performance patches that were disappointing to many. But notably, the master himself, Sachin Tendulkar, had motivated the young player and supported the decision to let him play for England’s national cricket team. Tendulkar himself had debuted in cricket when he was barely an adult. Surely, he must have noticed the spark in Ollie Pope’s play which led him to support this decision.

Since his match-winning streaks, Pope has been hailed by cricket experts as a player that shows class and technique that is essential to succeed at the game. He has often been compared to Ian Bell, especially for his classic cover drive shot or that lovely leg-side flick. He has successfully brought in the much-needed freshness to a batting unit that was becoming stale and archaic. So despite the odds, he has been pitted as a brilliant prospect for Team England with a resemblance to Joe Root, known for his stupendous Test cricket performance.

Cover Pic: icc-cricket.com

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