Captaincy can help Pope’s batting – but England will miss Curran’s balance

There is no doubt that losing Ben Stokes is a big blow to England. It was a strange injury — he did it running between the wickets, which could have happened at any time. It is one of those injuries that you get only if you are a highly-trained athlete. There is no way I’d have done a hamstring running between the wickets — I wouldn’t have been quick enough and I wasn’t highly tuned enough.
I’m actually surprised England haven’t called up Sam Curran to replace him. He could have batted at seven, with Jamie Smith at six, then Shoaib Bashir and three other seamers. I thought for the balance of the side they needed to find the next best all-rounder — against better opposition, I don’t think you can go with the balance of the team they look like they may go with in this Test match. It’s either a batsman light if they play Matthew Potts as the extra bowler, or a bowler light if they pick Jordan Cox as the extra batsman.
It seems to clearly show that they don’t think of Curran as a red-ball player. He hasn’t played a first-class match since June last year, but that wouldn’t have been regarded as an issue by Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key. He’s never let England down when playing in this sort of role. I’m not talking about him playing as an opening bowler, but as a fourth seamer who can bat. He’s been in great form in the Hundred and has really come on as a batsman.
I think the days of having only four frontline bowlers are mostly over. The problem with that is it gives the opposition the chance to attack the spinner. If they really went after Bashir successfully then it puts a lot of pressure on the three seamers, including Mark Wood, who will be used in short spells.
It happened in Australia when we lost 5-0 in 2013-14. Graeme Swann was really struggling with his elbow and retired during the series. Swanny wasn’t bowling as well as he would have liked and when he came on to bowl they took him down. And batsmen are increasingly proactive, so if England go in with only four bowlers I’d expect the Sri Lankans to go hard at Bashir.
The absence of Stokes gives Ollie Pope a great chance to captain the team. In general, as a Test captain, I don’t really think it matters if you have not captained your county.
The job isn’t like being a county captain, as there is so much other stuff that gets thrown at you — it is about far more than making decisions on the field. Nothing can prepare Pope for the sense of responsibility or the demands on his time in the build-up to game.
In some ways it will be easier as a stand-in captain. I had it when I captained England in Bangladesh in 2010, when Andrew Strauss was taking a break. You are a stopgap and it isn’t your team, so you are not worried about things such as growth and development and what the team stand for. You are just trying to get the results. I would imagine Stokes will be at the ground — and if I were Pope I would welcome that. He’s not trying to build his own team, just take on Stokes’s side and get results. There will be no question of playing in a different style.
McCullum, the head coach, will perhaps have to step up a little bit and take some of the weight off Pope’s shoulders to make sure Stokes doesn’t leave too much of a void. There is still plenty of experience in the team — Joe Root has played a vast number of Tests and the likes of Ben Duckett are not that inexperienced. He’s played 23 Tests, Chris Woakes has been around a long time and played 51, Mark Wood has played 36.
But that said, there’s been a big drop-off in experience. Since the end of last summer they have lost Jimmy Anderson (188 Tests), Stuart Broad (167) and now temporarily Stokes himself (105).
Pope made his debut in my final series, against India in 2018, so I know him a little bit — and from watching him in interviews it’s clear he’s a well-rounded, level-headed good guy. It’s not always clear from the outside who’s got leadership qualities but people within the camp — Stokes, McCullum, Key — will know and have seen this leadership side to him, and that’s why they made him vice-captain and now captain.
• Meet Jordan Cox, the player handed Ben Stokes’s batting spot on debut
The extra responsibility may actually help his batting. Batsmen are obsessed with their technique. They can spend all day worrying about what is and isn’t going right. But as a captain you have a million other things to worry about. You don’t have the time to be thinking about your technique, so you just have to keep things very simple — watch the ball and play to your strengths. And that tends to be the best advice for any batsman.
The two times you can focus on batting are when you are in the middle and in the nets. Andy Flower, when he was England’s head coach, used to say to me that I should use the nets as my escape from all the other stuff — I ended up averaging more or less the same when I was captain as when I was just a player. But what tends to happen to captains is that they eventually become too tired and their form falls away. It’s what makes Graeme Smith’s achievement in captaining South Africa in more than 100 Tests while averaging in the high 40s so amazing.
The other big change for England will be Dan Lawrence opening the batting in place of the injured Zak Crawley. He’s been 12th man so often he won’t care that he usually bats in the middle order, he will just be desperate to play.
As an opener, I obviously always say it’s the hardest place to bat, but that’s mainly to make myself feel better. There are challenges — you always face the new ball, you have to come out to bat straight after fielding and you never know when that might be — but there are also great advantages. Graham Gooch always used to say that if you batted in the middle order, the game can be set up for you. You might come out to bat at 30 for three and the innings is in crisis through no fault of your own. As an opener, you have the great chance to set the game up.
Dan came through at Essex, so I’ve known him for a long time and he will back himself. It will be interesting to see how his technique holds up, although with Sri Lanka we’re not talking about an Australian-style bowling line-up. He’s opened in one-day cricket and will look to score. I think the sort of fields he will face — three slips and a gully — will open up gaps and give him a chance to attack.
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