Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope celebrate

Welcome to Nottingham, where Test cricket is back, but not as we know it.

Nothing means quite what it should, not even Ben Stokes’ own words. “If you're smart enough, the series that [Jacob Bethell] had out in New Zealand, obviously he's going to be back in the UK for that India series,” England’s captain said on Test summer eve. “So, I think you put two and two together, you probably know what's going to happen.”

Taken at first as confirmation that RCB’s newest toy would be straight back in when Gautam Gambhir’s blues rolled into town, it now seems that, actually, two and two might not quite make inked in at No.3, Stokes reportedly clarifying internally that Bethell was only assured of a place in the squad, rather than the XI.

Still, it was impossible not to view what transpired in front of a half-full Trent Bridge through that lens, if only because there was so little else in the way of narrative to examine. Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope, the two most in danger of losing out to England’s atomic blond, each tonned up, as did Ben Duckett, who extended his statistical marvel of a Test opening record. And yet these are runs that should mean nothing that might also somehow mean everything, in which the greatest contest was not between bat and ball, but batter and batter.

Have England learned anything about Crawley and Pope here? Not really. Crawley remains imperious against the short ball and a sumptuous driver of anything full outside off-stump, while Pope looks to have the greater range and keener tempo, but also started skittishly, by the standards of the day at least, rapped on the pads first ball and slicing wide of gully soon after. What transpired didn’t provide any insight into how either will go against Jasprit Bumrah or Pat Cummins, and it never could have. And yet, with this gentlest of warm-ups leading into the roughest of back-to-back series, this is all we have to go on.

Could Bethell be the one to miss out? Crawley and Pope each outscored Bethell’s professional career hundreds tally on day one. For all his evident talent, Bethell is still a 21-year-old about to be thrown into a ten-Test stretch as tough as it gets. Conventional wisdom would say that it’s fine if his time comes a year from now, or at least if he’s held back until a spot inevitably opens up, rather than having to deal with the pressure of prematurely unseating a senior player. But that’s not how England think. They gamble, and in Bethell, they think they see a player with the potential to take on the best the game has to offer. For this team, it’s now or never, which means for Bethell, it’s now.

If so, the next Test England play may well drop the curtain on the Pope-Crawley sub-era. A month apart in age, the two have seen the fortunes of the other rise and fall, at times dovetailing, at others intertwined. Their stories began in earnest in New Zealand in 2019, Pope recalled after a two-Test false start the year before, Crawley handed a call-up out of the blue, the first of many times numbers would be overlooked in favour of something only the eye can see. Each looked to be making the grade in South Africa and during the Covid summer before being dropped and recalled as England floundered in a run of 15 Tests against India, New Zealand and Australia. Both received shows of trust as Bazball began, and each have repaid that faith in part, though not in full.

From the start of the 2023 Ashes onwards, the pair have diverged, and there’s an argument that each now deserves the other’s reputation. Crawley, the supposed inconsistent matchwinner, has made precisely one century in an England Test victory, in a game that included six other individual hundreds. Pope, the apparent flat-track bully, played one of the great England innings in Asia last year, added two more centuries in his next two series, and still ended the year with an average of 33. For a time, meanwhile, Crawley actually was consistent, England’s most reliable player against Australia and India, something that may prove decisive as those two heavyweights hove into view again. Pope’s first eight hundreds, meanwhile, have come against eight different teams, a stat that both shows an ability to succeed against all manner of oppositions while never dominating any one. The one team he has played but failed to ton up against are Australia, a black mark in the debate. Reading between the lines, Pope feels the more in danger, with the strength of his backing notably decreasing from the start of the New Zealand Test series to the end, and with dropping Crawley necessitating a non-specialist opener, though England haven’t always minded.

Whichever way the axe falls, it’s a five-year stretch that will be remembered fondly or not largely based on the success or failure of the next eight months, and yet England have been at least good for large parts of it, with Pope and Crawley playing their roles. There have been no series wins against India or Australia, but those two aside England have beaten every team they have played in at least two series, and not been beaten by any more than once. At its start, it looked as if Pope and Crawley might helm England for the next decade, but half that isn’t half bad, and while with each there is a sense of unfulfillment, there has also been plenty achieved too. Sometimes, sport denies a final conclusion, a definitive answer on a player one way or the other. Sometimes there’s simply someone deemed better, a decision that could have gone another way but didn’t. For one of Pope or Crawley, that point may be here, despite a Test century that may have come easily but will still have meant plenty. There are worse ways to sign off.

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