'England chasing history after backing themselves into a corner'

When Ollie Pope found out he was going to lead England this week, he cheekily asked Ben Stokes if he could have the captain's suite in the team hotel. Stokes declined.

Pope probably knew he was on a hiding to nothing. This final Test against India at The Oval is the fifth time he has deputised as skipper, so Pope would also have been well aware of the biggest challenge that faces anyone who replaces Stokes as England captain - not having Stokes the all-rounder.

This has been a gruelling series, not helped by the condensed nature of the schedule. Bodies on both sides have been broken.

England have bowled almost 315 more overs than India in the series and paid through the loss of Stokes. India have had to deal with injury problems of their own - Rishabh Pant and Nitish Kumar Reddy have gone down, while Jasprit Bumrah has been limited to only three Tests.

We have entered the final act. England have recent form for run chases, but knocking off 374 on this Oval pitch would be truly remarkable.

Starting day four on 50-0 would have been a position of promise, but the loss of Zak Crawley from the penultimate delivery of day three tipped the balance further towards India ending with a 2-2 draw.

If they do, they will have won the two Tests Bumrah has missed. They have managed their resources better than England.

The home side can point to their depleted stock of fast bowlers. Mark Wood and Olly Stone have missed the entire Test summer, young back-ups like Josh Hull and Sonny Baker have had stop-start seasons.

Brydon Carse and Jofra Archer endured the bowlers' graveyard in the fourth Test at Old Trafford. Hindsight is glorious and, a week on, suggests it would have been wiser to save one of them for The Oval. England were going for the win that would have sealed the series and did not get it. Had they caught Ravindra Jadeja on the final day, it may have been a different story. Drops have become a recurring theme.

Of all the pacers England could have asked to play all five Tests against India, the task was given to Chris Woakes, the oldest man in the squad. It would have been impossible to legislate for Woakes' shoulder injury, but there is also a question of whether a Brendon McCullum non-negotiable of chasing every lost cause to the boundary should apply to a weary 36-year-old fast bowler.

It left Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue and Jamie Overton to shoulder the burden. None of the trio shirked their responsibility, delivering a lion-hearted effort on Saturday in particular.

Atkinson's 48.4 overs in the match and Tongue's 46 are each man's most in first-class cricket, Overton's 38 his most for three years.

Atkinson looked back to the bowler that took Test cricket by storm last year. His performance belied any worries about a lack of cricket for the previous two months and suggests he perhaps could have played at Old Trafford. He should take the new ball for the first Ashes Test in Perth.

Tongue has had a bizarre game. Graham Gooch once said that playing New Zealand with the great Richard Hadlee in the team was like "facing World XI at one end and Ilford 2nd XI at the other". In the first innings at The Oval, Tongue was that in one bowler. He improved in the second and deserved his five-wicket haul, ending as England's leading wicket-taker in the series, despite only playing three Tests.

Between them, Atkinson and Tongue shared 16 wickets in the fifth Test. Overton was unlucky to have three catches dropped, but did little to disprove pre-match the suspicion he was an odd pick.

Even if the Surrey man could not have given any more, England did not need his hit-the-deck style in conditions that called for a full length. His recent history - two first-class wickets in four matches across almost two years - did not suggest he was coming in with great pedigree.

Over the course of this summer, Overton has gone ahead of Matthew Potts and Sam Cook in the pecking order, albeit if the comparison is slightly clumsy because of their different attributes. One wonders how both Potts and Cook might have gone here. England did not see the pitch until the day before the game, by which time they were dealing with the fallout from Stokes' injury.

Potts is centrally contracted. In the winter he played Tests against Pakistan in Multan and New Zealand in Hamilton, then disappeared. The whisper is that England have decided he is not pacey enough to be a battering ram, nor has the skills to thrive with the new ball.

Cook, so prolific in county cricket, was disappointing on Test debut against Zimbabwe in May, taking one wicket in his 31 overs. If that was his only chance to impress, he chose a bad time to have a bad game. It would be harsh if England have judged him on that alone.

If England have indeed gone cool on Potts and Cook, who else could they have turned to? Ollie Robinson is blacklisted and injured anyway. Calling up Dan Worrall would have sent Australia into meltdown. A 43-year-old retired James Anderson? Perhaps Overton was the best of limited options.

The managing of resources is a lesson for an Ashes series from November that will be just as relentless as this one.

England have to get their bowlers to Perth, then nurse them around Australia. Woakes is a serious doubt, Stokes is battling to be fit and Wood has had a setback in his recovery from knee surgery. England will be keeping everything crossed that Archer, Carse, Atkinson and Tongue can get through the next three months of white-ball cricket - both in this country and New Zealand in October - unscathed.

Once in Australia, England will have to balance the desire for a good start against the need to stay the course. The final three Tests are back-to-back.

There have been other Ashes pointers this week. Bar Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley, England's batters struggled against the movement they can expect to face down under.

Joe Root was rattled by words from Prasidh Krishna, yet will surely have to endure worse from the Australians. David Warner fired shots for his old team-mates on Saturday, following chirp from Steve Smith and Nathan Lyon.

England will not win in Australia if they do not take their catches, so the six drops in the second innings of the fifth Test are a huge concern. One of them, by sub fielder Liam Dawson, is the sort of thing that will count against his chances of going as the second spinner. Jamie Smith looked tired behind the stumps after his first five-Test series as a keeper. Another in the heat of Australia awaits.

Before then, England's supreme run-chasers face the challenge of pulling off their greatest pursuit.

They will head to Australia on the back of a stunning victory, or with the regret of a missed opportunity for a series win.