A seemingly refreshed Ian Bell, now captain of Warwickshire, is looking to mount an assault on the County Championship title this summer through a hefty personal tally of runs that he hopes will also result in a Test recall.
Bell, who is 34 on Monday, was dropped from the side for the winter tour to South Africa last December, having averaged only 20.38 in the 23 innings that followed his 22nd Test century, a typically frictionless 143 against West Indies in Antigua a year ago.
Nine scores of one or zero during this time, the last of which resulted in him being bowled for a duck by the Pakistan spinner Shoaib Malik during the series-clinching collapse in Sharjah last November, proved too hard to ignore, with the head coach, Trevor Bayliss, and the director of cricket, Andrew Strauss, explaining the call face to face.
“I wasn’t angry. I could understand it,” says Bell, who, for the first time since his debut in 2004, enjoyed the bulk of the winter off and checked the scores only occasionally during England’s 2-1 win. “I’d expect whoever is in the top six to score runs and so I don’t want to make excuses; I didn’t score enough.
“I got the call from Strauss and he and Trevor drove up to see me – I really appreciated that they took the time to see me. I walked away from that meeting with the belief that they still believe in me as a player and if I did score the runs, it would bring another opportunity. That was the message, not that it was the end but that the ball was in my court – and I can sit here now and say I have felt the benefit of a break. And I still believe, the way I am hitting the ball, I am good enough to get in that top six. I don’t think I’ve lost my game.”
That the runs had stopped flowing for a player so naturally gifted with bat in hand – Bell sits with 13,331 to his name after 287 appearances across all formats – led to questions of whether burnout was in fact the root cause following 11 years on the international treadmill. Certainly, after last summer’s Ashes win, his fifth as an England cricketer, which equals Ian Botham’s tally in the modern era, Bell appeared a man close to the end of his tether when stating, during celebrations at The Oval, that he would need to “take stock” of his future.
“I was out on my feet. I had some conversations with close people and by the end of that summer I felt pretty knackered,” he explains. “It felt like another net session, another game. And when you’re in the middle of an Ashes, it should never feel like just another day, it’s something special.
“That comment came out with the emotions and the Ashes over – but I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I was muddled, tired, and at that point I probably didn’t know if I wanted to carry on. But I do know now, having stepped away from it, that I want to carry on.”
Bell’s dip appeared, from the outside, to coincide with a stripping away of his responsibility in the side as a senior man, having been part of a post-World Cup cull of players and seen his Test vice-captaincy given to Joe Root when Strauss took charge in May 2015. The latter certainly stung.
“The 50-over stuff? I should have retired straight after the World Cup and I left it too long. I knew that was my last bit of 50-over cricket, what with a World Cup in England in 2019, there was no point hanging on. I made that mistake a couple of months too late,” he says. “With the vice-captaincy, was I hurt? Yes, I think I was, if I’m honest, but again I fully understood why: Rooty is the future England captain. Would I have liked to have carried on? Yes, into the Ashes in particular. As a senior player you don’t need to be vice-captain but when I got told I was gutted.”
Responsibility returns now in the shape of the Warwickshire captaincy, having taken over from Varun Chopra in January to fulfil a lifelong dream, with the fire in this particular Belly appearing to have returned as a result. He leads a side packed with title-winning potential and appears keen to stamp his own mark on a club he supported as a boy, and whose NatWest Trophy win in 1993, under the captaincy of Dermot Reeve and through a century from Asif Din, resulted in him running on to the Lord’s outfield during the post-match celebrations.
“The one thing I’ve tried to install is understanding what’s been before us and what you play for,” says the captain. “We’re trying to embrace that history, the great overseas players and make the current squad realise they are part of something special. I expect high standards and an understanding this is a special, big club.”
Lending a hand this season, from time to time, will be the great run-maker Graham Gooch, who Bell has roped in as a part-time batting consultant for the club, having enjoyed working with him during Andy Flower’s England reign. “His language is perfect for our dressing room; hopefully a little bit of gold dust that he can drop, people can use that,” says Bell. “We want to win trophies but we have guys who can be future England players and this may give them an early push up that ladder. It’s a nice little steal for us.”
Can this reunion with Gooch prompt the landslide of runs from No3 that might nudge the selectors, starting with Sunday’s first fixture away to Hampshire? “For me now, as captain, it is about focusing everything, all my energy, on giving back to Warwickshire, the players and our tactics,” says Bell. “I don’t want to nick off at the Rose Bowl and think: ‘That’s another knockdown, I can’t get back in the England side’ because it’s not about that. It’s about winning for Warwickshire. That’s where I want to focus my energy. The rest is down to the selectors.
“I don’t worry about it. Would I like an opportunity to finish [with England] on my own terms? Of course, every player would. Do I think I have a couple more good years in me? Absolutely. To be part of five Ashes wins, scored the runs I have, played in a good era, I am happy. But do I sit here and think it’s finished? No, I don’t.”
