Ollie Pope Strengthens Status to England Cricket's No 3 Role with Bold 90 Versus Lions

It is tough to know how relevant of the English team's warm-up fixture will prove meaningful when their Ashes series contest kicks off 10km away at Perth Stadium on Friday – a short span in space or time but worlds away in importance and environment – but if it achieved nothing more than boosting Pope's self-belief, that alone has made the exercise worthwhile.

The English side's number three batsman – that point is certainly completely established – built on his first-innings hundred by notching another 90 in the follow-up innings, and the most notable was not so much the number of scored runs but the manner in which they were accumulated. On occasion the player seemed commanding, striking a dozen fours and a pair of sixes, timing the ball sweetly but with devilish intent.

This was only a exhibition game versus a Lions team that deployed fully 11 bowlers throughout a contest played in front of a few dozen of people in a public park, but it was nonetheless hugely impressive. Officially, England, set a target of 202 after the Lions declared their second innings on 251 for six, triumphed by five wickets once Jamie Smith hurried the team across the winning target with a series of boundaries.

Crawley and Duckett, the remaining big first-innings performers, both failed in the second knock, while Joe Root scored several more points – 31 on this occasion – but was not significantly more convincing, before being puzzled and duly dismissed by Will Jacks. Brook suffered an same fate soon afterwards.

Shoaib Bashir – who finished the match having bowled 12 bowling spells for either team – will have encountered a portion of the strokes he confronted pretty challenging. His opening six deliveries against the Lions cost 56, with Ben McKinney tucking in to pitching that if not entirely wayward was surely not overly threatening.

At the end the sixth over of those deliveries, the English side's three other bowlers had given away almost precisely the equivalent total of runs – 57 – from 15, though Bashir grew a slightly less generous in time, giving up 27 from his final six. He claimed one wicket, holding a sharp, diving grab, diving to his right, to finish Bethell's knock for 70, from 80 deliveries.

Bethell, redeeming achieving merely three in the initial innings, was a member of a trio of fifty-scorers in the Lions team's top four. Ben McKinney's performances from opener were steadier than those of their No 3: he scored 66 in their first batting effort and scored 68 in their second, taking 61 balls for his 50 runs, with five and two sixes, the pair against Bashir's pitching. Jacob Bethell reached 68 then a mis-hit to Stokes at cover position, who held a low grab at shin level.

Jordan Cox showed like steadiness, and followed his first-innings 53 with a further 57, at just over a run per delivery. He played a few remarkably handsome hits en route, featuring a drive down the ground and a pull shot from back-to-back Carse balls to attain his half century.

Following his absence from the first day of this match with a illness and contributed just the least significant of inputs to the second, Brydon Carse bowled superbly when eventually given the shot, with Ben McKinney and Cox included in his three wickets.

This report will update