sport news MIKE DICKSON: I knew Ollie Pope was special as I watched him pile up the runs ... trends now
The early summer of 2016 on the verdant acres of a Surrey school’s playing fields and Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley were locked in a duel.
Cranleigh versus Tonbridge was always one of the most fiercely contested matches of the season and this occasion became a particular showcase for the elite level of schoolboy cricket that can be found on the southern circuit of the independent sector.
Batting first in a 50-over match, Pope scored a majestic 125 from his early position of No 3 as Cranleigh reached 311. In response Crawley — Pope’s opposite number as captain — stroked a glorious 140 that told of an equally outstanding potential, and he nearly won the game for the visitors before they fell marginally short.
The overall standard befitted two of the best school sides in the country that year, which was not entirely surprising.
Most of the 22 players taking part in the match — including, full disclosure, my son Sam — have gone on to play high-level club and university cricket. A few went better than that, with Marcus O’Riordan and Toby Pettman making it to first-class cricket with Kent and Nottinghamshire respectively.
England batter Ollie Pope (circled) shone playing cricket for Cranleigh School
Pope and Zak Crawley are now England teammates after their schoolboy rivalry
Another playing that day, Ben Earl, was on a different path and after joining rugby union side Saracens has so far won 13 caps for England in the back row.
Yet it was already clear, cricket-wise, that there was a duo whose talent was on a different tier to the rest. Seven years on, they are occupying two of the top three batting places for England against Australia.
In our household there has been a sense of vicarious pride in the rise of Pope to one of the great offices of state in English sport, having first encountered him as a 13 year-old boy, and spent many hours watching his development.
It was always going to be the case as our son was a fellow cricket scholar at Cranleigh, a year below, on the kind of scheme that has supplied so many of the England team in recent years.
In some ways this is not an ideal state of affairs for the game, although it is hardly the fault of the independent system that it keeps the flame of top-class schools cricket
