Ollie Pope will use his India tour experience to pass on to younger players

Ollie Pope says he is delighted to be back with Surrey, not just because he is looking forward to batting in English conditions again, but because he wants to mentor the Oval outfit’s up and coming batsmen.

Pope, who, at 23, already has 17 Test appearances in his locker, has not played for the South Londoners since 2019 due to a second operation on the left shoulder he injured fielding on the boundary, against Essex, two summers ago.

“The shoulder is good and I’m excited to be back at Surrey,” said Pope. “I’ve had four or five training sessions now, which has been good fun and it’s been nice seeing all the boys again.”

Pope, who averaged just 19.12 with the bat in England’s recent Test series in India, added: “It’s just nice getting back to English conditions. I’ve got the positive of sorting my shoulder out for good, but India was pretty tough; as it was for a lot of us batters out there.

“But I’ve learnt a lot of good lessons moving forward; not just for playing in India, but playing on day four and day five wickets.

“It was obviously challenging from a run scoring perspective. I had a clear game plan and I did everything I could to be successful, so I’m not regretful. But frustrated, absolutely. I got through the first Test with a couple of thirties, but then I got caught down the legside off a seamer, which was frustrating, and got caught at short leg is a pretty weird sort of fashion.

“But that’s how cricket goes. There’s probably going to be a time in my Test career where I get dropped and then go on and make a hundred. As a sportsman and as a batsman, you need to stay pretty level and control the controllables.

“After the first Test I was batting in the second innings and the pitch was spinning quite a lot and I remember standing at the non-striker’s end and Virat Kohli came up to me and said: ‘This is the last of the flat wickets’. At that point I knew it was going to be a pretty challenging rest of the series from a batting point of view.

“If you look at who was the most successful on those big spinning wickets it was Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant, both of whom trusted their defence and also had some great boundary options, which helped them put the pressure back on the bowlers.

“So, if you can nail your boundary options that’s the best way of turning pressure over. On those kind of wickets it’s difficult to accumulate runs in a low-risk fashion. So those were the main things I learnt – nail your defence, but also know your boundary options.

Pope is one of four emerging batsmen in the England set-up, which bodes well for the future, but meant they were vulnerable on pitches that spun excessively. However, the 23-year-old views the approach India adopted as a back-handed compliment.

“We’ve got to remember there’s not too many international teams out there with Zak Crawley, myself, Dom Sibley and Dan Lawrence – four batters who are 25 or younger. So, for the future, it’s only going to put us in good stead.

“We’ve played on the bouncy wickets in South Africa and experienced the extremes of the sub-continent, in India and Sri Lanka, so when we go back to India we’ll know what it requires to be successful, and that’s a massive positive.

“When guys like Joe Root and Ben Stokes are also saying these are the toughest conditions they’ve played in, you know how challenging it is.

“I think it was a massive compliment to us that India went away from producing wickets that are flat for three days and spin on days four and five. They obviously felt they had to change their game plan.”

But the next eight weeks will give Pope the chance to build on a first-class record of 3,125 runs at an average of 50.40; particularly at the Kia Oval where he averages 90 with the willow.

“I’m really excited to be back at Surrey,” he said. “I haven’t played at the Oval for a year and a half. I think my last game for Surrey was against Nottinghamshire in September 2019.

“We’ve got eight championship games now, which we can settle into. From a personal point of view it’ll be great to get that game time in, but I’m looking forward to hopefully winning some games for the boys. The plan, at the moment, is for me to bat at number four and that’s where I’ll be pretty happy batting.”

Pope, who hit 123 in Surrey’s final warm-up game – sharing in a fifth wicket stand of 178 with Jamie Smith (84) – is also keen to pass on his experience to the likes of Smith, 20, and Will Jacks, 22.

“I’d like to think the young batters we’ve got coming through the ranks at Surrey look up to me and the experience I’ve had at international level,” said Pope.

“If I see anything in their technique or in their mindset, I like to help out wherever I can. It’s one of the reasons why I’m very excited to be back here. It’s a different role to the one I enjoy with England, where all of us youngsters are looking up to the likes of Joe Root, who played a hundred Tests or whatever.

“There’s always the responsibility to score runs, but it will be nice to have that slight leadership role off the pitch as well. I can draw from my experiences in the England squad and the guys I’ve learnt off and will try to help out wherever I can – whether that’s from a training point of view, looking at how the boys are going about their business or helping the skipper out.”