Ollie Pope singlehandedly won the IND vs ENG 1st Test for England. The right-handed batter from Surrey scored a career-defining 196 with his side trailing by 190 runs. Although he fell short of a double century, it was more than enough for the English bowlers to win the match and take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series.
The next best score from England after his knock was a 70 by Ben Stokes in the first inning. Apart from him and his skipper, no other Englishmen scored a fifty in the match. An innings came when talks of him getting dropped from the side despite being the vice-captain were swirling around.
When England finally won and Ollie Pope was rightly fully adjudged as the ‘player of the match’, skipper Ben Stokes came out and lauded the 26-year-old. After the match, Stokes hailed his 196-run knock as the ‘greatest inning’ ever played in the subcontinent by an English batter.
Talking about Ollie Pope’s knock, Stokes said in the post-match interview:
“The situation we found ourselves in, the shots he played, 190 on such a wicket, he was able to manipulate the field; that’s the greatest innings ever played in the subcontinent by an English batter.”
While one may not agree with Stokes’ assessment of Ollie Pope’s match-winning knock, it is hard to argue that it isn’t one of the best knocks by a visiting batter in India.
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