Veteran Chris Woakes said that Ollie Pope doesn’t want to be Ben Stokes, and rather wants to build his own reputation as well. However, Pope is in charge of the England Test team in the series against Sri Lanka in the absence of Stokes who recovers from the hamstring injury that he sustained in the Hundred Men’s competition recently while playing for Northern Superchargers.

However, the 26-year-old Pope had a good day in office on Day 1 of the Manchester Test as England are trailing by 214 runs as well. After bowling Sri Lanka out for 236, they made the brisk end to the day. Woakes also said that Pope was relaxed on the field and communicated with the bowlers well.

“He’s been good. He doesn’t want to be Ben, he wants to do it his own way which is great. He does a really good role as vice-captain when he’s out there with Ben and they’re constantly talking,” Woakes told Sky Sports. “He’ll probably naturally pick up on what Ben does, but I wouldn’t say he was any different. He was just himself. He was certainly on it, trying to communicate with his bowlers, talk about fields, but also pretty chilled which was great,” Woakes said.

However, Chris Woakes himself had a great day in the office after he finished with impressive figures of 11-3-32-3 as well. He removed the wickets of Nishan Madushka and Angelo Mathews as England reduced Sri Lanka to 6/3 in seven overs as well. He came back to get the wicket of Kamindu Mendis later on.

“I think it’s a good day. When you bowl on day one on a Test surface like that, to be batting at the end of the day I think you’re really happy. It would have been nice to bowl them out earlier than what they got, but with the bad light we couldn’t bring our quick guys on to mop up the tail,” Chris Woakes added.