England's stand-in skipper Ollie Pope hailed the fitness and determination of his team on Friday after they crushed Pakistan by an innings despite conceding 556 runs, singling out batsmen Harry Brook and Joe Root for scripting the historic win.
England responded to Pakistan's total with a mammoth 823-7 thanks to Brook's 317 and Root's 262 on a flat pitch before the tourists completed a famous innings and 47-run win early on the fifth day by taking the three wickets needed to prevail.
"Definitely it is a special win for us in the background of the match. I would rate it among the top three alongside our wins in Rawalpindi (2022) and this year in Hyderabad in India,” Pope told a media conference after his team's massive innings victory.
"I think credit to firstly, the bowlers, the way they went about their stuff on day one and the majority of day two," Pope said at the post-match presentation.
"The fitness that they showed ... and then the same with Harry and Joe. We knew the way to win this game was to put a mammoth score on the board.
"And it wasn't just 100 obviously ... I think that's just credit to them, (not just) for the skills they've got with the bat but (also) the determination they had to put the team in a winning position. So it was awesome."
Pope sympathised with Pakistan, who fell to their sixth straight loss and have not won a Test at home since 2021.
"Obviously when you bat and make 550, you think you're in the driving seat there," Pope said.
"But when you come out to bat again, and you're 260 runs behind, and the pitch is three days older than it was when you first batted, it's never an easy thing to do.
"We felt like we had a lot of different wicket-taking opportunities. The odd ball was staying low, we got the ball reversing a little bit, and got the odd ball to spin as well. It's never an easy position.
"Even if you bat as well as you can and make 400 in that last innings, we still would have tried to back ourselves and chase 140 or so."
The only bitter pill for Pope in a game where the runs flowed freely was his two-ball duck.
"I mean, that's the game, isn't it? I smoked a pull shot straight to mid-wicket and, unfortunately, I was the one to miss out this week. But it's a team game and what matters is that we're on the right side," he said.
Pope, who led England in Ben Stokes absence with hamstring injury, also rejected talk about the team disrespecting the game when they lost the third and final Test to Sri Lanka at the Oval last month.
“We don't disrespect any opposition or the game, that is all chatter that came from outside the dressing room. We never underestimated Sri Lanka, things just didn't go the way we expected,” he added.
Pope said he was looking forward to the next two Tests as England had a very variable spin attack in Jack Leach and Shoaib Bashir who have different styles of bowling.
