Ollie Pope is England’s latest Test debutant to benefit from a daring – or desperate – faith in youth

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Exactly one year before Ollie Pope faced the press as an England cricketer for the first time, he was making a pair in a Surrey second XI game at New Malden. A year before that, he was playing cricket for his school team, Cranleigh. There are thus two conclusions we can draw from the fact that Pope is likely to be making his Test debut against India at Lord’s on Thursday. Firstly, that Pope has come an exceptionally long way in a short space of time. But also: so have England.

If Pope does make his debut for the second Test, he will become the fourth player aged 20 or younger to have been picked by England this year. Or, to put it another way: in the space of eight months, England will have called up more under-21s than in the entire 16 years of Duncan Fletcher, Peter Moores, Andy Flower and Peter Moores again.

Boldness or desperation? It’s probably a bit of both. Either way, Pope’s elevation – following in the footsteps of Mason Crane, Dom Bess and his Surrey team-mate Sam Curran – represents a sustained punt on youth the likes of which English cricket has not seen in its history. And throwing a 20-year-old middle-order batsmen into a Lord’s Test against the world’s No1 team certainly counts as that, one informed not simply by Pope’s exceptional figures for Surrey this season, but by also something less measurable.

National selector Ed Smith gave the game away when announcing Pope’s inclusion on Sunday: “The selection panel believe that Ollie’s performances and character suggest he is well-suited to international cricket.” Character. What on earth does it mean? Perhaps it’s some elusive elixir of daring, drive and equanimity. Perhaps it’s just the sort of nebulous nonsense you get attached to when you read too much Ovid at university. But for Smith, cartoonishly depicted as a data drone when handed the job earlier this year, character is the foundation stone, the attribute he trusts above stats or technique or anything else: the skeleton key that allows even the flawed, the raw or the mercurial to unlock the creaking chest of Test cricket.

Pope certainly spoke well enough at Lord’s on Tuesday, carrying himself with the natural assurance that the privately-educated seem to possess by right. He spoke clearly, intelligently and engagingly about his rocket ride to the top of the English game. He cracked a joke when someone asked him how long he had seen himself as a potential Test cricketer (“Two weeks,” he replied with a grin). He even offered mild surprise at the England and Wales Cricket Board’s decision to cut its overseas placement scheme which saw him spend the winter at Campbelltown-Camden playing Sydney grade cricket.

There’s a decent brain under that blue helmet, then. And Pope credits his winter in Sydney for transforming his game, galvanising a raw teenager with just five Championship games into a battle-ready talent. “I didn’t really have a coach,” he explained. “I just had to ask people to throw balls at me midweek. Being on your own two feet, getting to know your strengths and weaknesses, learning from your dismissals.”

But it was Surrey’s first red-ball game of the season that really convinced Pope he was onto something good. Coming in late on day two against Hampshire with the game finely poised, he scored a brilliant 145 against an attack featuring three Test bowlers, winning the match and setting off a rich vein of form that has seen him lead the Division One batting averages with 684 runs at an average of 85.5. “I need to just keep riding the wave.”

How long can he keep riding it? Pope’s technique will come under stern examination from the Lord’s slope, a cloudy weather forecast and an Indian attack that largely had the measure of England’s batsmen at Edgbaston. Pope is an occasional wicket-keeper, and like many glovemen he is diminutive in stature and plays very strongly square of the wicket. He cuts and pulls supremely well – another legacy of his Australian winter – but according to CricViz he scores less freely straight down the ground, which may tempt India to pitch the ball up and get him driving.

It may also be that Pope takes Dawid Malan’s place at No4, which would be an extraordinary induction. No England batsman has made his Test debut at that position in almost 20 years, since Michael Vaughan took on South Africa in 1999, the famous Wanderers Test in which England were 2 for 4 before Vaughan launched a dogged rearguard that portended the golden career to come.

You might almost say it was an innings full of character. And Pope believes he may be made of the same stuff. “On the wickets that offer a little bit for the bowlers,” he explained, “I’ve actually played my best innings. Coming in, in those situations, helps me get my head down. On the flattest wickets at The Oval, I’ve often missed out.”

Pope is a practitioner of visualisation: he recently watched a sporting documentary about the ‘zone’, and likes to walk out to the middle ahead of the game and run through it in his mind. But can you possibly imagine what it will be like striding out on an overcast Thursday morning at Lord’s, with England 10 for 2 and the Indians needling him as he arrives? Can you really recreate the knot in your guts as you look up and see your first ball in international cricket hurtling towards you?

Maybe not. When you’ve had a journey like Pope has had, perhaps you teach yourself not to look that far ahead. This is, after all, the wildest and most thrilling ride he’ll ever take in his life. And like 686 of his predecessors before him, Pope just has to step aboard and milk it for as long as he can.