\n<\/p>\n
Ollie Pope said he respects England’s decision to replace him with Harry Brook as vice-captain for the Ashes series.<\/b><\/p>\n
Pope has been deputy for most of Ben Stokes’ three years as Test skipper, stepping up to lead on five occasions – including England’s last Test against India in July.<\/p>\n
But the Surrey batter was demoted when the squad for the tour of Australia was named in September.<\/p>\n
Director of cricket Rob Key explained the move by saying Brook, who became England’s limited-overs captain in the summer, is a “better leader”.<\/p>\n
Pope said: “If they think that’s the right thing for the team going forward, and obviously Brooky captaining the one-day stuff and the T20 stuff as well, that’s absolutely fine by me and I respect the decision they’ve made.”<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old was speaking after making scores of 100 and 90 against England Lions in England’s only Ashes warm-up match in Perth.<\/p>\n
It was Pope’s first time in the middle since playing in the County Championship two months ago.<\/p>\n
He had a mixed summer for England, scoring hundreds in his first two innings – against Zimbabwe and India – then passing 50 only once in his next eight.<\/p>\n
Pope said he has “worked” on “a couple of little technical bits” of his game, without revealing the full extent.<\/p>\n
“Just smoothing out a few areas,” he said.<\/p>\n
With debate focusing on the quality and quantity of England’s Ashes warm-up fixtures, Pope was one of the players who took full advantage of the three days at Lilac Hill.<\/p>\n
“I always take a bit away from warm-up games. Even if I miss out, there’s always something to take from it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m someone who likes time in the middle just to get myself ready for a series. I found it really beneficial.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Ollie Pope said he respects England’s decision to replace him with Harry Brook as vice-captain for the Ashes series. Pope has been deputy for most of Ben Stokes’ three years as Test skipper, stepping up to lead on five occasions – including England’s last Test against India in July. But the Surrey batter was demoted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}