Ollie Pope To Lead England At Oval Vs India; How Has He Fared As A Test Captain?

Ollie Pope (Source: @mufaddal_vohra/X.com)

We are not far away from the fifth Test to be played between England and India at the Oval in London. However, a day before the game, hosts England announced their playing XI, and one big omission was their skipper Ben Stokes, who is injured, as Ollie Pope replaces him in the leadership capacity.

Ollie Pope's Test Captaincy Record

Ollie Pope, who has featured in 60 Test matches so far for the Three Lions, has scored 3,558 runs at an average of 35.58 with 9 centuries to his name. Pope has led England in four Test matches so far, where England, under his leadership, have won three games and lost just one.

Pope first captained England against Sri Lanka in last year's three-match Test series, where he led the side in all three matches. England won the first two games by a margin of five wickets and 190 runs, respectively, in Manchester and Lord's, whereas they lost the third game by eight wickets, which was first played at this very venue, the Oval.

However, following this, when England were up against Pakistan in a three-match Test series, Ben Stokes, the regular skipper, missed the first Test, and Pope once again donned the captaincy hat, as England won that game by a comfortable margin of an innings and 47 runs and, in the end, lost the series as they couldn't win the next two games, where Stokes captained.

Fascinatingly, in the four matches Pope has led England in, he has only scored 191 runs at an average of 27.28 with just a single century in those games, when he thumped 154 with the bat.

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Pope's Poor Luck With DRS

One more intriguing thing here to notice is that in all those four Test matches, England went ahead with 13 DRS (Decision Review System) referrals, where, unfortunately, under Pope's leadership, England could not overturn even one of them, as all 13 of them turned out to be unsuccessful.

His captaincy record is decent, but the DRS one is a bit dicey, as Pope has not been able to take a single successful review so far in his four-match Test captaincy career.

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