England captain Ollie Pope said that there was ‘extra motivation’ before the season-ending Oval Test against Sri Lanka, which ended with ‘frustration’ as Sri Lanka registered their first win in England in a decade. After their 3-0 win over the West Indies, England had a chance to sweep the home series – a feat they last achieved in 2004 as well. However, Dhananjaya de Silva’s side managed to complete an eight-wicket win in the final as well.

“Of course, we want to be a team that wins every game, as everyone does, and it’s been 20 years since we’ve done it,” Pope said. “That was an extra bit of motivation this week, so there’s that slight bit of frustration that we’ve not done that. But at the same time, at the start of the summer, had someone said we’re going to win five out of six Test matches, you probably would have taken it as well.”

However, Ollie Pope also said that complacency was not even there at the end of the season as well. Pope also added that they are not happy with their third-day performance, which left Sri Lanka chasing the total.

“I don’t think it was complacency at all. It’s been a long summer, but that’s nothing to do with the fact we lost this game. We still came to play with the same intentions, but this game, for some reason, didn’t quite come off. We didn’t get enough runs after having a first-innings lead and I’d probably put it down to that. It was just one of those days where it didn’t come off. We played some really good cricket throughout the series and then in a couple of weeks’ time we’ll be able to look back on that day three, reflect on it and make a decision then,” said Pope.

“It’s disappointing not to be on the right side of the result. Day three, we probably shot ourselves in the foot a little bit. We weren’t at our best and credit to Sri Lanka. The way [Pathum] Nissanka played was high-class and they deserved to win this Test. But we weren’t at our best as well,” concluded Ollie Pope.