\n<\/p>\n
Ollie Pope hailed the ability that the \u201cunbelievably skilled\u201d Harry Brook possesses \u201cto flip a game\u201d after the Yorkshireman\u2019s quickfire 99 helped England to sprint to a total only six runs short of India\u2019s first-innings 471 on day three at Headingley. With India reaching stumps on 90 for two the outcome of the first Test remains beautifully uncertain.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone knows what a fantastic player Harry is, and I think being able to put really skilled bowlers under that much pressure shows exactly the skills he has got,\u201d Pope said. \u201cBut it is not just slugging, it is very well thought out. The ability to kind of flip a game \u2013 we were saying: \u2018Oof, if he bats for another hour here we could be in an amazing position.\u2019 That just shows the kind of skill he\u2019s got, and power. It was unbelievably skilled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brook fell in search of his hundredth run, hooking Prasidh Krishna straight to deep backward square leg to become the 14th Englishman to be dismissed on 99 in a Test, scored off 112 balls. But Pope insisted that for all his disappointment his teammate would not regret his choice of shot at that crucial moment. \u201cHe was pretty gutted to get out but he plays that shot pretty well,\u201d Pope said. \u201cI think he\u2019d look to either keep it down or hit it for six next time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brook had been dismissed off a no-ball before he had scored, and was also dropped on 46 and again on 82. \u201cI think fate had decided 99 for him,\u201d said Jasprit Bumrah, who ended England\u2019s innings with a five\u2011fer but had also been responsible for the overstep that rescued Brook on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot to take any credit from him, he played really well. He plays an aggressive style of cricket, but he can play an aggressive shot and sometimes he can shut up shop as well and try to negate if someone is bowling a good spell. You have to be really accurate and really clear in your plans here because if you are a little wayward run-scoring becomes very quick.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo full credit to him, he played really well. We\u2019ll try to hopefully have better plans and try to negate his plans in the next innings.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Jasprit Bumrah claimed five England wickets.<\/span> Photograph: Matt West\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Pope stated that England\u2019s total showed that criticism of Ben Stokes\u2019s decision at the toss to put India in to bat had been wide of the mark. \u201cWhen you see a score like [India\u2019s] you think we should have batted first, but I don\u2019t think it was the wrong decision at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were good on day one and didn\u2019t get our rewards. On another day we might get a few more wickets. We know we\u2019ve had some success chasing at this ground too, so it\u2019s easy to look at it and say, \u2018You\u2019ve got to bat first,\u2019 but hopefully it will play out in our favour in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n Late-innings runs might yet prove key, and while in their first innings India lost their last five wickets for 24, England\u2019s added 189. \u201cIt\u2019s really important, especially in England where the ball gets softer and the pitch is probably playing at its best, so there are definitely runs to be had,\u201d Pope said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI think it was really important for us to get seven [six] runs behind \u2013 I think 40 or 50, just from a mindset, might have given them a bit more confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Bumrah insisted that his side had \u201clearned from that experience, and hopefully not make those mistakes in the second innings\u201d. He admitted that the slope at Headingley \u2013 like the more famous one at Lord\u2019s \u2013 can be hard for visiting players to deal with, with occasional no-balls a symptom of their unease.<\/p>\n \u201cMostly in India we are used to playing on simple, flat grounds that are not slopey,\u201d Bumrah said. \u201cOne side is up, one side is down and it\u2019s a little tricky sometimes because you start from a place up high, then it goes steep, and then you go back up. So it can be difficult as a bowler to find rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ollie Pope hailed the ability that the \u201cunbelievably skilled\u201d Harry Brook possesses \u201cto flip a game\u201d after the Yorkshireman\u2019s quickfire 99 helped England to sprint to a total only six runs short of India\u2019s first-innings 471 on day three at Headingley. With India reaching stumps on 90 for two the outcome of the first Test<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1362,311,784,426,1364,974,1361,1363,1360],"class_list":{"0":"post-9282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-brook","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-hails","11":"tag-india","12":"tag-innings","13":"tag-pope","14":"tag-skilled","15":"tag-swashbuckling","16":"tag-unbelievably"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}