Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ian Bell

What is it about Ian Bell? By which I mean, why does the poor fellow arouse such animosity? No other player in the current England team sees his failures magnified and successes downplayed to such an extent. Even when he bats well, his critics use this as evidence that, damn it, he should be batting like this all the time. Perhaps today’s splendid 199 against South Africa will quieten the critics. But if so, I suspect it will do so only temporarily.

A friend suggests that Bell is the victim of the “Henman effect”. That is to say, he’s a nice, middle-class public schoolboy (Rugby in Bell’s case) whose demeanour is the opposite of the swagger or blue-collar defiance that’s more in vogue with the times. There may be something to this, though it’s worth noting that Alastair Cook, another nice middle-class lad, does not face the same level of opprobrium.

Another theory, that I find more persuasive, is that when Bell bats well he makes the game look easy. He has a classical style that produces, at its best, a certain timeless elegance at the crease. Among current and recent England cricketers, Michael Vaughan is his only rival in these stakes. Going further back, I remember that David Gower, to my enormous irritation, even fury, received much more criticism than other, lesser players, in part because his dismissals were put down to “carelessness” largely because Gower so often made batting look the simplest thing in the world. Yeomen were praised for their industry; Gower condemned for his cavalier disregard for the “work ethic” and apparently wasteful approach to life at the crease.

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