Ian Bell

Ian Bell: Lord Megachief of Gold 2011

That’s right – Ian Bell. Weird but true.

Dale Steyn came pretty close to becoming the second player to earn a promotion to Grand Lord Megachief of Gold, but Ian Bell’s year was just too ridiculous to overlook.

Some numbers

11 Test innings, 950 runs, five hundreds, an average of 118.75 and he scored at about four runs an over as well. That’s the kind of year that can sway even someone who once made indifference to Ian Bell an official editorial stance.

And we did need some swaying as well. We never wanted to name an English player Lord Megachief of Gold. We didn’t want such a respectable award to be sullied by allegations of bias. There shouldn’t be any danger of that, considering the above.

Some words

For his first couple of innings of 2011, it was easy to overlook Bell. He hit hundreds in both of them, but they were the usual ’someone else got there first’ hundreds.

The first was at Sydney where England won the Ashes. The second was against Sri Lanka and that series saw some selfless batting from the man. As well as that support act hundred, there was a solo effort in the third Test and some feisty declaration batting sandwiched in between. It’s that flexibility that elevates Bell above Alastair Cook in our eyes. He is now seemingly a batsman for all situations.

Number three

Ian Bell had always bleated on about being a number three batsman to anyone within earshot while simultaneously making an extraordinarily compelling case that he was anything but that. Put him in the middle order and he scored runs quite happily, but move him to three and suddenly Tim Munton was his batting role model.

Midway through the second Test against India, he got yet another chance at three after Jonathan Trott knacked his shoulder in the field. England had conceded a first innings deficit of 67 and then lost Alastair Cook in the fourth over of their second innings. Bell hit 159 and England won by 319 runs.

Of course the dopey knobhead undermined his efforts to some degree by getting himself temporarily run-out. India’s noble decision to allow him to bat on overshadows that innings a bit, so Bell needed to do something else.

In his last Test innings of 2011, he hit 235. England won by an innings. From winning the Ashes to becoming the top-ranked Test side, Ian Bell was there throughout. He has played so well that we now actually give a toss whether he’s in the team or not. It’s a staggering transformation.

Congratulations, Ian. You are Lord Megachief of Gold 2011.

When India allowed Ian Bell to carry on batting at Trent Bridge

Cricket action stops and starts and we didn’t feel very comfortable with someone being run-out when pretty much everyone on the field had stopped playing.

We don’t care too much about the technical rights and wrongs and everyone on the field seemed to share those feelings once they’d had a look at a replay. All the same, the Indian team still deserve a huge amount of credit for having the balls to allow Bell to return to the crease. It sounds pompous to say that they transcended sport, but they did. They were pretty confident that they were right and the Laws of Cricket were wrong in this instance.

Besides, a great innings in a great Test match didn’t warrant such a crap ending – one that no-one was that overjoyed about. Praveen Kumar thew the ball in like it was one he’d just found in a hedge and Abhinav Mukund took the bails off like he was the only one still playing because all his mates were going home for their tea. Which is pretty much what was happening.

When Bell was dismissed a second time, the Indians actually looked happy. People celebrated. It seemed more fitting. It seemed like it was actually part of a Test match.

Ian Bell and middle-order batting

Batsmen always want to play at the top of the order. This might be because they realise that you get more recognition up there. Well we’d like to recognise Ian Bell’s middle-order skills.

Runs equal plaudits and while top-order batsmen face the new ball, they can also approach batting however they want.

If Alastair Cook makes a decent score, he will do so at a steady rate of three runs an over. Maybe he’ll score at 2.8 runs an over if things are tough. After he passes 150, he might open his shoulders and score at 3.2 runs an over, but probably not. He does what he does and he does it astonishingly well.

Ian Bell isn’t allowed to play like that though. Before Cook goes out to bat, Graham Gooch sidles up to him, twirls his moustache and says: “Score at exactly three runs an over, Alastair. No more. No less.”

Before Bell goes out, Gooch could say a number of things.

• “Kick ‘em when they’re down, Ian.”
• “Pick up the pace a bit, Ian – compensate for Alastair.”
• “Save us, Ian. It’s all gone to shit.”
• “Have you had a slice of my mild cheddar? The block looks slightly smaller than it did this morning.”

The remarkable thing is that Bell has been delivering all that’s been asked of him. He’s not just playing well, like Cook. He’s playing well in about a million different ways.

Ian Bell’s year – an actual opinion

Don’t be afraid. We’re experimenting with having opinions. We meant to say it before the first Test – and maybe this isn’t the best timing when he’s on 98 not out – but we think Ian Bell will be England’s best batsmen in the next 12 months.

Ashes 2010-11

Bell’s exquisitely constructed batting was rather overshadowed by the two functional tower blocks that were the contributions of Cook and Trott, but he was batting as well as either of them, just with fewer opportunities.

He looked utterly at ease in Brisbane when England made a hash of their first innings and much the same when they were Johnsonned up the jacksie in Perth.

This summer

It was a county match that made us conclude it was to be Bell’s year though. Against Nottinghamshire, in a fairly low-scoring game, he made 139 and then 33 off 16 balls. He was captain too.

It just smacked of a man doing the job. As someone whose work nickname is ‘bare minimum’, we know how difficult that can be.

Ian Bell, James Anderson and doing a bit better when things aren’t in your favour

It’s always tempting to judge players on their best days, but with anything long-term – a cricket career, a relationship, an overnight stint watching the Ashes on TV – a better form of evaluation is to look at what happens when things aren’t in your favour.

You learn a lot about a person when everything’s gone to shit. Score 220 not out or take 6-40 and you’ve done something that will probably win a Test match, but those days are few and far between. That’s not what life’s like.

Life’s not chocolate and rainbows. Life’s a long, hard, unremitting slog where everyone’s out to get you and nothing goes right. Life’s mostly about turning bowled for a duck into caught at slip for 62. It’s about turning 0-120 into 2-60.

Sure, making the most of the high points is part of it, but in the grand scheme of things, every moment counts. Waiting at the airport is part of the holiday. That’s your lot. Make the most of it.

Ian Bell

The hundred today isn’t the best example, because when he came out to bat, he joined a batsman who was already into treble figures, but generally, over the last year or so, Ian Bell’s improvement has been about being better on his bad days.

Last winter in South Africa, Bell started doing the job. It wasn’t beautiful shots and a flawless hundred that won people over, it was a five-hour 78 to help save a Test.

James Anderson

James Anderson’s swing bowling will still claim its fair share of headlines, but that’s not the measure of the man. The reason why he’s now one of the best bowlers in the world isn’t because of that, it’s because he’s flattened out the troughs.

Where once it was a few overs of swing and then ball retrieval from the wrong side of the ropes, now reverse swing and containment are the fallbacks.

With both these players, the focus remains the same, but the picture as a whole has changed.

We like that Ian Bell was not out

Ian Bell’s made larger steps towards forcing us into an opinion before now. Yesterday’s 84 not out against Bangladesh was more of a shuffle, but we like that he got the job done – because that is, after all, the whole point.

Number three is a funny spot in one-day cricket. Earlier this week, we wrote that it was the worst spot for Kevin Pietersen. For exactly the same reasons, it’s probably the best slot for Ian Bell. That doesn’t mean we think Ian Bell’s a better batsman, because we don’t. We just think they have different styles of play and the formulaic nature of one-day cricket means they’re suited to different parts of the innings.

We feel a bit wobbly after that outpouring of opinion. That’s enough for one year. We’re going to have to eat boiled potatoes and listen to XFM for the next few months now in a non-committal bland-land where all anyone says is ‘don’t know’ and ‘not bothered either way’.

Ian Ronald Bell is an actual hero

In the words of Alan Partridge: “Jurassic Park!”

How can we explain what has happened today? Ignore the dismissal near the end, Ian Bell did the job. This was not expected by anyone.

Imagine you’ve got a wooden spoon. This wooden spoon can somehow create dazzling pyrotechnic displays that light up the night sky. Some of your friends say: ‘Wow, that’s one hell of a wooden spoon you’ve got there.’

‘Yeah, great,’ you think (in a sarcastic tone of voice, because that’s how you think). You know the wooden spoon better than your friends. Whenever you’re trying to cook some methi gosht, the spoon does a quick burst of strobe lighting before going all bendy.

That’s no good. It may be impressive, but it’s useless as a wooden spoon and that’s what you want it for: to carry out the wooden spoon work – stirring and suchlike.

One day, you’re cooking murgh makhani and it starts to stick, but you can’t find a good spoon. In desperation, you grab the wooden spoon and jab it into the pan. To your surprise, it retains its rigidity and doesn’t set off a catherine wheel or anything like that. It just does the job for which it was intended.

When you taste the murgh makhani, it has benefited from the browning flavours bequeathed to it by the short period where it stuck to the pan and it tastes better than anything you’ve ever cooked.

You look at the wooden spoon and you apologise for all those occasions where you called it a knobhead and told it to go back to Warwickshire and stop testing everyone’s patience. For the time being, all is forgiven.

Ian Bell’s ball-hitfulness

We’re not interested in how Ian Bell’s faring in Test cricket any more. All we’re hoping is that the soap opera continues.

The Ian Bell situation has gone way beyond cricket now. We’re interested for sociological and psychological reasons. Will it finish with a lynch mob? Will it ever finish at all? It doesn’t feel like it will.

Recently, Bell has been testing the extremes of human emotion through his ball-hitfulness. In the first Test, he had a ball-hitfulness critical fault. In the second Test, his ball-hitfulness was exquisite.

But Bell’s always innovating. Methodical in the way he toys with England supporters, he’s now moved on to where-to-hit-the-ballery and he’s taunting the fans with his ability and inability in this facet of the game.

Keep it up Ian. Prove nothing and disprove nothing. We’re neither with you nor against you.

Shane Watson and Ian Bell and what they have in common

We wrote about Shane Watson and Ian Bell over at The Wisden Cricketer. We said that they weren’t hugely popular in their respective countries, perhaps because they were overly serious. We also said that Shane Watson couldn’t bowl.

Shortly after the post went up, both Bell and Watson scored hundreds and the commenters have laid into us, saying that these hundreds prove our article wrong somehow. You’ll love it. We get called an idiot, childish and are advised to stop working.

Also, if you want to see a spectacularly clunking repetition of the phrase ‘all manner of’ in an article about people taking guard in ludicrous and implausible ways, take a look at our latest piece for Cricinfo.

Ian Bell is the second England batsman to score a hundred in the innings

Let’s examine the Ian Bell fact. You know the one: he only scores hundreds when someone else in the England batting line-up has already made one.

This has just happened against South Africa. Alastair Cook was first and then Ian Bell outstripped him with 141. Let’s just say that the above criticism does not apply today. Ian Bell can’t help what happens before he comes to the crease and he can’t do much more than make a hundred, so today he’s done very well.

So save the Ian Bell fact. Save it for when he fails. That’s when it means something. It’s not the hundreds he does score that are the problem, it’s those he doesn’t score. A second hundred in an innings is actually pretty handy and puts England in a far better position to go for a win.