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Midway through its fifth day of action, the first of its second round of fixtures, Ollie Pope became the 11th person to score a century in Division One of the County Championship this season – and five of those play for Surrey. Jamie Smith already has two. The pre-season title favourites may have drawn their opening game but they are looking ominous, in this game and in general, and at stumps were 412 for six.
Things also look ominous for Leicestershire, if in a rather different way, as they settle into the top flight after last year’s promotion. Beaten by Sussex in their season opener, by the second session here, as Smith and Pope cantered towards triple figures, they looked equally underresourced in confidence, ideas and quality. They were buoyed somewhat by a couple of late wickets, if not by glances at the scoreboard.
A crowd of 4,700 assembled at the Oval on a bracingly cold early spring day which felt, mercifully for those with recent experience in the England team, a long way everything but geographically from any kind of Test cricket. Nevertheless, given that Surrey’s top six have all played for their country at the highest level, this game was always going to be parsed for potential international ramifications. The surprise perhaps was that the first person to stake a claim was Leicestershire’s Josh Hull.
Now 21, Hull will celebrate the second anniversary of his Test debut, and to date his only international appearance, in September. He looked hopelessly raw when selected, just days out of his teens, against Sri Lanka on this ground in September 2024 but has matured enough since to suggest his selection was not so much misguided as mistimed. There was not quite enough here to make a compelling case for an imminent recall, but though his growth since has mercifully not been physical – he already measured 6ft 7in, and there was one occasion where an attempt to prevent a boundary ended in a spaghetti tangle of limbs and the ball rolling through them all to the rope – he seems both more rapid and more reliable. Having missed the Sussex game, his season started with a wicket in his first over, trapping Dom Sibley lbw with an excellent delivery.
If at that point the game was yet to find its rhythm and establish a narrative, by the time Hull returned in the afternoon, Surrey had moved into a position of burgeoning dominance. With catchers fanned across the legside, he beat Pope for pace with a short ball that hit the batter hard on the helmet, and Smith’s edge with one that moved away. But there were no more wickets, and he was replaced after a less threatening over during which both batters drove their way to boundaries and centuries. When he returned for a fourth spell, deep into the final session, Smith welcomed him back with a brutal low-flying pull for six to go past 150.
For Smith this was not just different to Tests in climate and quality, he also had a completely different role. Coming in at three he was at least initially extremely circumspect: one run off his first 10 balls; four scoring shots off his first 25, three of them singles. Pope came out 13 overs later, after Rory Burns had chipped Tom Scriven to mid-on, and soon overtook his teammate, at which point he had scored 24 to Smith’s 22 and with precisely half as many balls faced. However, soon before lunch Ben Green helped Smith settle with some generous bowling – at 28 this is Green’s fifth season in the first division and he has already bowled more than in any of the other four – while defending, if that is the appropriate word, the short boundary. Smith struck three fours in as many balls, and he was away. He rode his luck on – rare – occasions but continued to impress and entertain until Green found an edge, and Ajaz Patel a catch, in the 90th over, by which time he had scored 166 off 240.
Other than scores of 100 and 90 against the Lions at Lilac Hill in the Ashes warm-up, a game that was neither particularly competitive nor much of an indicator of future success, Pope endured a harrowing winter. Add a couple of cheap lbw dismissals to Warwickshire’s Ethan Bamber last week and more than seven months had passed since his last first-class 50, while his previous century was against India at Headingley in early June, 21 first-class innings ago.
But nobody at the Oval doubts his ability and both he and Smith came to look supremely comfortable. The amount of time Dan Lawrence took to emerge from the dressing-room after Pope nicked Patel into the gloves of Ben Cox – that century-sealing boundary off Hull turning out to have been his last scoring shot – certainly suggested nobody there thought a wicket looked at all likely. Ben Foakes ended the day on 62, and having only been dismissed once with an average this season of 226; Leicestershire need to conjure a few more surprises.
