The rise of Dom Bess has been staggeringly swift. On Thursday, if the sun keeps shining, he will, at the age of 20, become a Test cricketer after playing only 16 first-class matches in his life. Yet two or three weeks ago he was pondering whether it might be a good idea to see if he could go out on loan from Somerset as there was little incentive for any county side to play two spinners so early in the season and his friend, Jack Leach, England’s most recent debutant, was occupying that slot in the Somerset team.
Now, after Leach’s unfortunate injury, Bess is among the glitterati at Lord’s. He is suddenly hot property, though I am unable to confirm that he already has a sponsorship deal with Ikea. He might have earned one since it became public knowledge to the millions of cricket followers out there (I take a more optimistic view than the ECB’s chairman) that he was in the brand new Exeter store looking for furniture when Ed Smith rang him with the news of his selection last week.
It would be remarkable if Bess, so callow in cricketing experience, had a major impact at Lord’s. But don’t count it out. In September 2016 he was catapulted into the Somerset side to make a Championship debut against Warwickshire. The ball was spinning but even so it was stunning that his first two victims in successive deliveries were Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell. He finished with six for 28 from 16 overs and added two more for good measure in the second innings. In March, in his first game for the MCC in Bridgetown, Barbados, he took eight wickets against Essex and knocked up a rapid century. Does he not realise what a difficult, tortuous game this is?
Charlie Gabbitass, Bess’s cricket coach at Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon, suggests that he doesn’t. “Dom does not overthink things,” he says. “He just gets on with it. Give him an opportunity and he’ll embrace it. At Lord’s on Thursday I expect him to be thinking, ‘Right, I want to get five wickets here.’”
Even so, Gabbitass acknowledges that Bess was not an especially precocious schoolboy cricketer. “He came to us from a local primary school, a podgy boy from Sidmouth and he took a bit of time to adjust but on the games field he always had confidence. Early on it became apparent he had the ability to spin the ball – he’s got big hands he can wrap around the ball – and he could instinctively bowl at different paces without changing his action. Playing rugby helped him, I’m sure.
“He was never hot-housed. It got him fitter and he enjoyed it, moving from hooker into the backs. He had an insatiable appetite to learn and take on board advice. And he was a humble boy with a good feel for the game when he was captain.”
One indication that young Dom was not a child prodigy is that he felt it necessary to move clubs to progress. The Bess family hail from Sidmouth, where several of Dom’s cousins still play cricket on a famous old ground overlooking the sea, but with the prompting of Gabbitass, Bess decided at the age of 16 to move to Exeter CC, where he would be guaranteed more bowling. He attended the Somerset Academy while still at Blundell’s before becoming a beneficiary of the club’s decision to play on some spinning surfaces at Taunton.
In part this explains his astonishing success as a young spinner. In 16 matches he has 63 wickets at 22.49 apiece; as a batsman he is not technically perfect but he has a good eye, natural ability to time the ball and a batting average of 25, which could easily improve. He may have to learn how to bowl on flat pitches in Test cricket – but he won’t worry too much about that.
His uncomplicated zest for the game shines through. Unsolicited, Paul Farbrace, England’s assistant coach, mentioned how impressed he was by Bess when he joined up with the England squad last summer. It was not so much his batting and bowling that made an impression; it was his guileless eagerness to get stuck in to whatever they were doing (he can play football, too), however exalted those around him were. Bess does not like to sit still for long. He buzzes in the field, bristles with the bat and instinctively hunts for wickets.
He is, of course, incredibly raw but so far seems to have made that an asset; he does not waste time contemplating the pitfalls ahead. He has never played at Lord’s, though he was in the squad when Somerset were there last year – apparently this was his first, wide-eyed trip to the capital.
Back in the West Country there will be a host of well-wishers for the most endearing of cricketers on Thursday. Another Blundell’s teacher, Amy Candler, who was rather more concerned with Bess’s academic progress than his cricket coach, speaks warmly of his “grit and determination to make the best of himself. We’re all absolutely thrilled by his call-up”. So they are at Taunton, even though they are fast running out of spinners there.
