Pope - My tips for switching off at night

In an exclusive interview for The Edge, Ollie Pope takes us through his sleep routine ahead of a big day at the crease
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Ollie Pope is in Australia with the rest of the England squad that is attempting to win back the Ashes.

The England batter and 4CAST member is Down Under until early January as the old rivals go head to head in a five-Test series that continues throughout December.

The hype and expectation around an Ashes series is something else, which in theory makes getting a restful night even more of a challenge.

So how does Ollie manage to switch off at night in the middle of a huge Ashes Test, especially if he's batting the next day?

In the latest instalment of our exclusive chat for The Edge, Ollie takes us through his sleep routine.

Ollie, it's so important to sleep well during a big series. But it must be hard not to visualise that first ball the next day and how that day might unfold. How do you get it out of your head?

I think for me it's about trying to forget, almost, what's happening the next day.

That's pretty important in the evening, because I think your brain's almost like a muscle in itself. You don't want to kind of overthink the whole thing.

But at the same time, if I am not out, say on 20 or 30, I do wake up in the night thinking, 'Oh, what could tomorrow be? It could be an amazing day.' You could go out and you kind of dream of the best. And then that does sort of keep you up at night as well, but that's in a good way.

And the same if you do go out and get 100 and you feel physically knackered, but at the same time, you're mentally pretty wired still and you're excited for what the next day has got in store too. So it's always quite a hard thing to manage.

What kind of a sleeper are you? Some people have that superpower where they can just put their head down and nod off. Is that you?

I'm a pretty good sleeper in general. I go to bed early, and I wake up pretty early, so yeah, I'm normally asleep during a Test match by 10pm, probably 10pm to 10.30pm.

But I'll be in bed probably unwinding, whether I'm reading or watching something for probably half an hour or 40 minutes before.

But the annoying thing about going to bed early is that I find myself waking up at probably 6am most days during a Test match. But overall I'd say overall I'm generally a pretty good sleeper.

You can't be having your screen on just before bedtime!

I know, I know! I wish I was better with that habit!

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