Have you heard the one about the batter selected by England for Test cricket despite not yet scoring a first-class hundred and with a career average of just 25?
That sounds like the start of a corny joke but a raft of players who have churned out runs in county cricket may not find it very funny.
Keaton Jennings, Haseeb Hameed, Alex Davies and James Vince, to name but four, were overlooked when England needed batting cover for the tour of New Zealand following Jamie Smith’s decision to skip the trip for the birth of his first child.
Jacob Bethell was picked instead and will debut in the first Test in Christchurch from Thursday following wicketkeeper Jordan Cox’s tour-ending fractured thumb.
Ollie Pope will take the gloves, with Bethell coming in at three to get a chance to prove his first-class numbers are no indication of his skill. As going by those, this is a rogue selection, even for England.
While they have plumped for bowlers with little or limited first-class experience – Josh Hull and Shoaib Bashir being the prime examples – the batters selected have had a weight of red-ball runs behind them, in addition to the attacking verve Bazball adores.
Ben Duckett averaged over 70 for Nottinghamshire in the summer before his Test recall. Harry Brook was peeling off runs for fun for Yorkshire prior to his Test bow. Smith averaged in excess of 50 before he became England’s wicketkeeper-batter.
Bethell’s 2024 red-ball season for Warwickshire saw him average a lick over 31 with four fifties and a best of 93. You have to feel for his Bears team-mate Davies, who scored his 1,115 runs – which included four centuries – at 50.68 and at a decent strike-rate of 61.97 to boot.
But perhaps we should not be too surprised at Bethell’s inclusion as 1) England management appear to have a disconnect with the county set-up these days and 2) the 21-year-old may just be a generational talent, showing glimpses of that in white-ball cricket over the last few months, internationally and domestically.
Bethell England’s latest rough diamond?
Speaking ahead of left-arm seamer Hull’s Test debut against Sri Lanka this summer, England head coach Brendon McCullum said: “We need to identify that county cricket and Test cricket are probably slightly different games.
“If we were picking a county side, it would look a little different to what it looks like on the Test side. The decisions that they make might not always line up with us and that’s cool. We don’t do stuff in spite of them, we understand they have a different job to do.
“We’re bringing some of these guys who we see as rough diamonds with incredibly high ceilings, into an environment where we’re able to shape them, and give them the opportunities and hasten the process of them getting to the level that we think they can get to.”
Bethell certainly looks a rough diamond. And rough may be being unkind, because he hasn’t half sparkled of late.
A 15-ball Vitality Blast fifty for Birmingham Bears – one of four half-centuries he struck in that competition – came amid a haul of 361 runs, and he also impressed in The Hundred for Birmingham Phoenix.
Bethell made his England T20I and ODI debuts against Australia in September, notably spanking Adam Zampa for four boundaries in a row in his second T20 to help his side to victory.
He then enjoyed a homecoming in the West Indies – Bethell was born in Barbados and lived there for his first 14 years – with three fifties across the white-ball tour, one in the ODI leg and two in the T20s.
His first T20I fifty made him the youngest to that milestone for England in the format, his second was a 22-ball effort clinched with the third of three successive sixes.
‘All the attributes are there with Bethell’
In the five-match series, his strike rate was 173.97 and his average, due to only being dismissed once, stood at 127.
The power and crispness with which Bethell hits the ball and the quality with which he flashes away late cuts makes him stand out.
He has presence at the crease, looking like the sort of guy that could take down Australia in Australia, which is what this England rebuild – one that has seen Ben Foakes, Jonny Bairstow and the bowling Ollie Robinson jettisoned and James Anderson retired – is all about.
India may have made light work of the Baggy Greens in Perth this week but England have not won a Test in Australia since a series victory there in 2010/11, when Bethell was seven. Their record in the intervening years reads played 15, lost 13, drawn two.
Bethell’s batting has caught the eye but he is also a decent left-arm spinner and outstanding fielder, handing England an all-round package that they may come to rely on for years.
Marcus Trescothick, who led England in the Caribbean as his interim spell as white-ball coach concluded, said of Bethell. “All the attributes are there. If you have markers to be able to go ‘right, you need to do this, this and this’, he’d be knocking on the door for that.
“There’s no reason why he can’t break through and succeed because he’s flourished in both (white-ball) formats. If he was to get an opportunity, it would be exciting to see what he can do.
“You could almost see him breaking through as being the next youngster after Harry Brook – the real exciting one coming through for the next journey they’re going to take.”
England’s Test tour of New Zealand
- First Test: November 28-December 2 (Christchurch)
- Second Test: December 6-10 (Wellington)
- Third Test: December 14-18 (Hamilton)
