Chris Woakes: Ollie Pope wants to be unlike Ben Stokes

Due to a hamstring injury, England captain Ben Stokes will not be playing in the current series against Sri Lanka. He was replaced as captain by Ollie Pope, and under his leadership, England has made a good start, limiting the visitors to 236 runs in the opening innings. After hitting 22/0 on Day 1, the Three Lions are behind by 214 runs.

Chris Woakes, an experienced all-rounder for England, expressed his admiration for Pope’s first day in leadership and his desire to forge his own path and establish his reputation rather than emulate Stokes.

Woakes reported that Ollie Pope appeared to be a natural replacement to Stokes and that he was composed and communicating well with all of the bowlers regarding the adjustments in the field.

“He has behaved well. It’s nice that he wants to do things his own way rather than trying to be Ben. When he’s out there with Ben and they’re always chatting, he does a really decent job as vice captain, Woakes told Sky Sports.

He’ll undoubtedly naturally become aware of Ben’s actions, but he wasn’t really different, in my opinion. He was just the man he was. He was really focused on talking to his bowlers and discussing fields, but he was also really laid back, which was fantastic,” he continued.

Although Woakes expressed enjoyment for the first day of the series, he thinks the squad ought to have finished them off sooner. At one point, Sri Lanka was 6/3, and then they were 113/7, but England was unable to keep them below 150 runs. With a remarkable 72-run knock, Milan Rathnayake saved Sri Lanka from certain defeat.

In an attempt to explain their mediocre final-ball performance, Woakes stated that poor lighting contributed to their inability to get the pacers in to clear the tail.

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It seems like a nice day. At the end of the day, I believe you’re pretty glad to be batting when you bowl on the first day on a Test surface like that. Although it would have been ideal to finish them off sooner than they did, Woakes stated that “we were unable to send our quick guys on to mop up the tail due to the bad light.”