For Ian Bell it was something of a hospital pass. Thrust in front of the cameras at a sponsor’s event in the City on Thursday, the batsman was the first of the current England squad to face the glare of the media since the seemingly never‑ending Kevin Pietersen epic stirred back into life at the start of the week.
Here was a familiar face from the dressing room, decked out in a branded T-shirt and trying desperately to play himself in on the trickiest of pitches when fielding questions about a decision made well above his pay grade by the new director of England cricket, Andrew Strauss, under whom Pietersen remains an international outcast.
Stuart Broad had been scheduled to appear alongside him in the bowels of the investment bank’s building near St Paul’s but withdrew from proceedings late on due to illness – fear not, he will be fit for the Lord’s Test next Thursday – leaving Bell on stage with only the New Zealand one-day batsman Grant Elliott, the happy outsider, and the former England captain and current Sky Sports pundit Nasser Hussain, the genial host, for company.
After 16 minutes of putting cricket‑related questions to the two on show – Bell has ditched an early obsession with personal statistics and now puts the game situation first; New Zealand bowlers, the top of their mark, are often amazed at the number of catchers employed by the captain Brendon McCullum – Hussain opened it up to the floor.
Pietersen, despite being 4,500 miles away on holiday in Dubai after an achilles injury ruled out his late arrival for the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League, then dominated. Does the now former vice-captain Bell, who shared a dressing room with him for 10 years, fear England are weaker for keeping him out of the side?
“Kevin is a quality player, probably the best I’ve ever played with,” said Bell, who insisted he had no knowledge of reports that the Test captain Alastair Cook threatened to walk if Pietersen returned. “It’s a pretty packed middle-order right now.
“Will it harm our chances not to have him this summer? If we let it come into our dressing room and talk about it, yes it probably might. Our skill now as players is to make sure, when we get to Lord’s against New Zealand, we win and keep it as simple as that.”
Bell has some sympathy for Pietersen’s confusing summer, in which he skipped the early part of the IPL and stayed in England to play four-day cricket for Surrey after, in his mind at least, being encouraged to do so by the new England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Colin Graves, who officially takes up the role on Friday. Strauss was not responsible for that and despite an unbeaten 355 against Leicestershire, Pietersen’s abilities were not the sticking point.
“I don’t know that conversation [with Graves] or how that took place. If that did happen and then you get 350, of course you can be a little aggrieved, can’t you?” said Bell. “But you’d have to ask Colin Graves about that. Certainly English cricket is not in the place we’d like. We’ve had some really good times, but the last 12 months have been tough, on and off the field it’s not been great. Now we have to change that.”
While Bell, who averages just shy of 33 in Test cricket since his dominant Ashes series in 2013, may have been the middle-order batsman most under pressure by an available Pietersen, the support for a former team-mate was refreshing, if slightly expected given they share the same agent. Strauss will have to understand how stuck between a rock and a hard place Bell was on the topic on Thursday and also note the right-hander was fully behind his own appointment.
Hussain broke off from his MC duties to offer his own opinion, citing Pietersen’s previous run-ins with authority and that bridge-burning autobiography as valid reasons for Strauss’s decision – even if it was not the decision he would have made personally. “We’re not good enough to make anyone unavailable for selection unless they retire,” said Hussain.
“Andrew Strauss is going to be judged on results but make no mistake, he could have easily gone the other way, the populist route. He took the difficult decision and he will be judged on results.”
For the besuited and bearded Elliott, who was as relaxed here as he was during that ice-cool run chase in the World Cup semi-final against South Africa, and will play the one-day internationals that follow the Tests, the whole saga is something of a curiosity. “I asked Belly beforehand: ‘Is it always like this?’ and he replied: ‘Yeah, pretty much.’”
“It’s complicated isn’t it?” Elliott later mused. He’s not wrong.
