Posted by The plot of The Terminator is that the machines send a cyborg back in time to kill Sarah Connor and the humans send Kyle Reese to stop it. The whole fate of humanity relies on Reese doing the job.
That’s the plan for saving the species. The whole plan is Kyle Reese turning up naked and stopping a near-indestructible literal killing machine. There isn’t even the kind of tokenistic Plan B you sometimes come up with in half a picosecond so that you can kid yourself you’re planning for all eventualities. Kyle Reese stops the Terminator or humanity becomes extinct.
Ed Smith and his selectorial cronies didn’t go to this extreme when selecting wicketkeepers for the New Zealand tour. They did the tokenistic Plan B thing instead. ‘Jos Buttler’s the wicketkeeper,’ they said, ‘and if Jos is injured, we’ll use Ollie Pope, because he’s also a wicketkeeper.’
No-one really bothered scrutinising that a great deal at the time, because there were only two Tests and Buttler was never going to get injured, so it didn’t really matter.
But then Jos Buttler – who very rarely keeps wicket himself – suddenly had to keep wicket for 201 overs in the first Test and entirely coincidentally suffered a back spasm a few days later.
Maybe by the time you read this he’ll have recovered. Or maybe Ollie Pope will be behind the sticks.
Back when we were thinking about some of the England team selection talking points ahead of this series, we took a look at Ollie Pope’s wicketkeeping stats and turns out he’s never stumped anyone.
When you’re discussing who’s actually a wicketkeeper and who’s a batsman who’s kept wicket a handful of times, one of the measures you could use is whether or not that person has ever stumped anyone. We’re sure Pope’s stumped batsmen in club and second XI games, but he’s never stumped anyone as a pro.
Ollie Pope has no pro stumpings and he is (probably) keeping wicket in a Test match.
On the plus side, it will give Yorkie Bairstow an additional grievance, which bodes well for South Africa.
To be fair, a number of people seem stumped by this development.
Well, the selectors have really thrown down the gauntlet to young Pope.
Let’s hope for him that England’s bowlers find more spice in this pitch than the last one. 1200+ squats in two days can’t be fun if you’re not used to it.
I managed that many in 24 hours on a trip to Africa
That’s beyond the threshold and qualifies as ‘wild’.
I’d make Burns keep. And captain.
“The brutality and lack of stumpings are unfortunate, but as a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny, the keeping of Ollie Pope is pushing the frontier of team selection as an art.”
—Andrei Tarkovsky
Vatican XI
Ricky Pontiff
Mass Dhoni
Basilica D’Oliveira
Matt Priory
Ollie Pope
Lewis Gregorian
Agnus Dei Fraser
Benedictine Stokes
Eric Holiness
Dominus Sibley
Marcus Apostolic
Tim Ambrosary as 12th man?
Nice
Or simply St Ambrose. https://g.co/kgs/m9hCbP
Sistian Chappell
Dougave Marillier
Sistian Chappell is the winner
Angelus Matthews!
Marnus Labuschism?
Davignon Boon?
Joan Root?
Cameron Urbancroft?
How could you leave out Kyle Abbott?
You’ve gone ecumenical there, Sam – even multi-denominational – in a radical squad worthy of the ECB selection panel.
My personal favourite is Communion Harvey.
Mr Harvey is an interesting character of a former player. However, rightly or wrongly, I might associate him more with shrimps on the barby and tinnies of amber nectar on ice, than with wafers and wine for Eucharist.
The Holy CB Fry
Ian Bishop!
Vicaram Solanki
Shai Pope
Rachel Priest
Jenny Nun
Glen Chapel
Religion Bell
Communion Harvey
Stuart Lord
Christ Schofield
A Deal (With The Devil) Rashid
Heaven Lewis
Disciple Farbrace
Torah Marsh
Greg Jewett
Ressurection Botham
Immaculate conception Ward
Yes, very busy at work today, why do you ask?
Pious Chawla
Rewatching those 8-43 highlights (sadly)… Terry Altarman.
No Buttler. Zak Crawley. Five seamers. No spinner. Hmmm.
Zak Crawley isn’t something awful like John’s son, is he?
One of the seamers will get knackered on account of there being no spinner to “tie up an end”. Time for KC to dust of the link to his “Always play a spinner” article again.
Maybe they were just trying to nullify Pope’s “no stumpings” situation. Without a spinner in the ranks, his inability to stump anyone won’t matter.
IF Pope = keeper, THEN Root = spinner.
Anyone else glad this version of Warner didn’t turn up for the Ashes? Ouch. If I were captain I think I’d have let him had a go at the big four-oh-oh.
Did anyone just see The Great Neil Wagner using a sledge hammer on the popping crease?
He is truly ((the best cricketer ever) ^ 2)
How can you get run out in a test match? Was that second run really so important?