Ollie Pope and the curious case of his second-innings struggles

There was not much that Ollie Pope could have done about the ball that dismissed him in the second innings of the first Ashes Test in Birmingham last week.

After a brace of boundaries early on the fourth morning, Pope was cleaned up by Pat Cummins, whose yorker tailed in sharply to sneak under the toe of his bat and rip the off stump out of its groove. Despite a grimace as he walked off, Pope knew that he had been beaten by a world-class bowler - and a world-class ball.

But Pope's dismissal for 14 off 16 balls extended a trend that has been apparent throughout his 37-match England career, which has spanned nearly five years. In his first innings of a Test match, Pope averages 47.91, a record that puts him among the best batters in the world; in his second, that figure sinks to 16.56.

It is hardly unusual for a batter to have a stronger record in his team's first innings than their second; in Test cricket worldwide, batting averages drop with each innings of a match as pitches become worn. It is the extent of Pope's drop-off that marks him out as unusual, with a ratio that is unmatched among top-seven batters across Test history.

"I'm aware that that's the case," Pope said at Lord's on Monday, after batting in the nets two days out from the second Ashes Test. "I think, in the past, I've put it down to wearing myself out too much, maybe, in a Test match. Last game, I put it down to a nice ball - which I don't normally do."

By his own admission, Pope struggled with the intensity of Test cricket early in his international career - particularly during the Covid era, when players were unable to escape their hotel rooms and switch off during the course of a five-day match. At the end of the 2020 summer, he reflected: "Going back to a room that overlooks the pitch, it's quite hard to escape."

In first-class cricket for Surrey, where both stakes and scrutiny are lower, his record in the first innings (70.55 average) and second innings (69.57) are nearly identical. It is no surprise that he has had so much success playing at The Oval, not far from his home in south London, where he has scored 11 of his 18 first-class hundreds.

The trend is not exclusive to Pope, or to England. In the Australia dressing room during this series, the batters with the biggest drop-offs are the two who describe themselves as "nuffies": Steven Smith (who averages 75.47 in the first innings and 39.00 in the second) and Marnus Labuschagne (64.63 and 40.72).

Both men and their obsessive tendencies would appear to back up Pope's theory that he has tended to expend too much mental energy in his first innings of a match - as would the fact that his only second-innings half-century in Test cricket, against New Zealand at Headingley last year, came after a cheap first-innings dismissal.

Pope believes that he will be able to close the gap. "I've managed to sort of work out what works well for me over a Test match," he said. "It's just keeping a bit more relaxed throughout, to be honest, rather than putting all the emphasis on the first innings. I used to probably get too mentally fatigued during a game, potentially.

"I think the way we're playing, it's very enjoyable and a bit more of a relaxed environment that we're in. That just allows you to wake up mentally fresher every day… hopefully, the rest of this series and the rest of this summer, I can contribute in the first and second innings."

In fact, when Pope reflected on the first Test, his main frustration was that in the first innings, "I got myself in, got to 30-odd and didn't play a great shot." He was trapped lbw by Nathan Lyon, playing across the line. "Whenever you walk off for 30-odd on a good pitch, you have left some out there."

It was the first of Lyon's eight wickets in the match, but Pope insisted: "We're going to keep being really positive against him, and try and take our strong options. Those eight wickets he got will make us think, 'Right, what was the best option for me?' a little bit more. That's the way we see it; we don't see it as changing things.

"We obviously don't want to lose eight wickets to him but on a pitch like that, it's probably more suited to him than a lot of other English pitches," Pope said of Edgbaston. Two days out from the second game of the series, there is a heavy covering of live grass on the Test strip at Lord's. "He's a highly-skilled bowler and knows how to bowl when people are coming at him… it's going to be a good game of cat-and-mouse, I think."