India, July 31 -- Ollie Pope had a terrible record as England's stand-in Test captain till Thursday. He didn't win a single toss in four attempts and got 14 DRS calls wrong. He changed both of them in the fifth Test against India at The Oval. Leading England in the absence of Ben Stokes, who got ruled out of the series due to a shoulder injury, Pope won his first toss on a greenish-looking surface to make first use of it and then took a fantastic review to send back India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal early in the innings.

Such was Pope's record with DRS calls that former England captain Michael Atherton had no doubts that it was another addition to Pope's long list of disastrous DRS calls. To be fair to Atherton, it did look like Jaiswal had ...