‘England chasing history after backing themselves into a corner’

Ollie Pope cheekily asked Ben Stokes if he could have the captain’s suite in the team hotel when he learned that he would take over as England’s head coach this week. Stokes resisted.

Pope was probably aware of his hiding place. Pope would have been aware of the biggest challenge that anyone who replaces Stokes as England captain will face, not having Stokes as the all-rounder, since this is his fifth time taking the lead in the final test against India at The Oval.

The condensed nature of the schedule has not helped this series, which has been a grueling one. Both sides have been damaged.

In the series, England paid for the loss of Stokes with almost 315 more overs than India. Rishabh Pant and Nitish Kumar Reddy both experienced personal injury issues, while Jasprit Bumrah was only allowed to play three Test matches.

The act is now complete. Although England has recent success in run chases, it would be truly remarkable to knock off 374 on this oval pitch.

Day four with a 50-0 record would have been a promising start, but day three’s loss of Zak Crawley’s penultimate delivery had the potential to see India draw level at 2.

The home side can point to the team’s exhausted fast bowling roster. Young back-ups like Josh Hull and Sonny Baker have had a rocky start, just like Mark Wood and Olly Stone, who have missed the entire summer of Tests.

In the fourth Test at Old Trafford, Brydon Carse and Jofra Archer had to endure the bowlers’ graveyard. It seems a week later that one of them would have been wiser to save for The Oval, but hindsight is wonderful. Although England were hoping for the win, it was a loss for the series. It might have been a different story if Ravindra Jadeja had been captured on the final day. Drops have become a constant theme.

Chris Woakes, the squad’s oldest member, was chosen to lead the charge against India in five of the five Tests that England could have requested. A weary 36-year-old fast bowler’s constitutional right to pursue every lost cause to the boundary should be a question, but it would have been impossible to pass a law to apply to him.

The burden was transferred to Josh Tongue, Jamie Overton, and Gus Atkinson. The trio delivered a heartfelt effort on Saturday in particular, without skipping a beat.

Overton’s 38 is his most for three years, while Atkinson’s 48.4 overs and Tongue’s 46 are both man’s most in first-class cricket.

Atkinson recalled the bowler who oversaw last year’s Test match record. His performance defied any doubts he had had the previous two months without playing cricket and suggested he might have played at Old Trafford. For Perth’s first Ashes Test, he should take the new ball.

In the fifth Test, Tongue and Atkinson each took 16 wickets. Overton had no luck to have three catches dropped, but he did little to disprove the notion that he had been an odd pick in the pre-match.

England did not require his hit-the-deck style in circumstances that necessitated a full length, despite Surrey’s man’s inability to give more. His recent history, which included two first-class wickets in four matches over the course of almost two years, did not suggest that he had a strong pedigree.

Overton has surpassed Matthew Potts and Sam Cook in the pecking order over the course of the summer, despite the slight awkwardness of the comparison between the two. How Potts and Cook might have arrived here, one wonders. The pitch was not seen until the day before the game because England was dealing with Stokes’ injury’s fallout.

Potts has a central contract. He vanished during the winter, playing Tests in Hamilton and Multan against Pakistan and New Zealand. The rumor is that England has decided he lacks the skills to handle the new ball and is neither quicky enough to be a battering ram.

Cook, who has a lot of county cricket experience, took one wicket in his 31 overs against Zimbabwe on his Test debut in May. If winning that was his only chance to impress, he chose a bad game at a bad time. If England had decided against him solely based on that, that would be harsh.

An Ashes series from November that will be just as relentless as this one will teach about resource management.

England must transport their bowlers to Perth before moving them somewhere else in Australia. Stokes is in a serious doubt, Stokes is attempting to recover from knee surgery, and Wood has experienced a setback. England will continue to keep its eyes on Archer, Carse, Atkinson, and Tongue unharmed for the next three months of white ball cricket, both in this and New Zealand, in October.

England will need to strike a balance between wanting to get off to a good start and wanting to keep on course once they are in Australia. The final three tests are consecutive.

This week there have been more Ashes pointers. England’s batters, bar Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley, struggled with the movement they could expect to face down under.

Joe Root will surely have to deal with even worse from the Australians, even though Prasidh Krishna’s words shook him. Following Steve Smith and Nathan Lyon’s chirp, David Warner fired shots at his former team-mates on Saturday.

The six drops in the second inning of the fifth Test are a major issue because England cannot win in Australia if they don’t catch any balls. One of them, by sub-fielder Liam Dawson, will affect his ability to become the second spinner. After his first five-test series as a keeper, Jamie Smith appeared worn out behind the stumps. Another Australian heat wave awaits.

England’s elite run-chasers must now face the difficult task of completing their greatest goal.