Ollie Pope continues to baffle and team’s failure against spin are just some of the many weaknesses for England

When Zak Crawley presented Ollie Pope with his 50th Test cap in Multan a few weeks ago the opening batter reminisced about them playing against each other as schoolboys and then made two quite eye-catching statements. With (hopefully) tongue firmly lodged in cheek, Crawley joshed about how the two men “run Clapham together” and described Pope as “one of the best players in the world”.