Burns and Pope fall to bad habits from lean winter in India

After a lean winter, both of Surrey’s England batsmen, Rory Burns and Ollie Pope, needed their springs to blossom, but they were dismissed for four and 22 respectively by a similar impatience.

During their winter Test series in India, England’s batsmen interpreted the message to be “positive” so enthusiastically that some tried a shot at almost every ball – Pope, for one, dancing down the turning pitch in Ahmedabad to the left-arm spin of Axar Patel and being, not surprisingly, stumped.

In their growing desperation, England’s batsmen, apart from their captain, Joe Root, seemed not to observe Rishabh Pant’s shot selection. Pant may well have given the impression he slogged every ball, but no. He blocked or left 138 balls in that series. Sure, he made hay off the 100 balls he attacked, but normally only after playing himself in.

On a slow and nibbling Nevil Road pitch in early April, against Gloucestershire’s medium-pacers (not one over of spin), Burns and Pope blocked or left only a few balls before launching into drives. Consequently, Surrey needed a sensible 40 from their newish fast bowler Jamie Overton to reach a workable 220 for nine.

Burns’s career is at a critical juncture: he could kick on and become the successor to the Sirs, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, or he might have played his last Test. He dutifully missed the two Tests in Sri Lanka for the birth of his first child, then was dropped after the two Tests in Chennai, England’s senior opener no longer.

His first dismissal of this season recalled his barren Test series against Pakistan last August, when he scored 20 in his four innings. Thrice he was dismissed by Shaheen Afridi, and here it was another tall left-armer, David Payne, who swung the ball away and had Burns, driving, caught at second slip. For all his movements before the ball reached him, Burns had not moved his head far enough across for his eyes to get behind the line.

It is admirable that Pope wants to be busy, but he was frenetic by the end of the India series, and here, too, he was trying to run before he could walk. He had scored only 10 when he attempted a cover drive that almost swept him off his feet, and only 22 when he threw the kitchen sink at a wide half-volley and drilled it to backward point, not content with a checked drive for two. Pope slammed his hand on the ground in frustration.

Ben Foakes, who in India had gone the other way under pressure and become too passive, took up his stance right in front of the stumps. Gloucestershire’s James Bracey, beginning to be an England rival, stood up to them and Foakes was leg before the moment he missed a straight ball.

Hashim Amla showed his Surrey colleagues how to do it, waiting for the ball to be under his eyes before attacking it. He was patient, a throwback to an age when the dictum was “give the first hour to the bowler”, whereas in the T20 era it is “have a couple of sighters then whack it”.

After the minute’s silence at the start, for unity, Surrey’s players wore black armbands to commemorate their three England players who died during the winter, John Edrich, Robin Jackman and Joey Benjamin.