Posted by A lot of people hate Ian Bell – England supporters mostly. Given a choice between his playing crap and getting dropped or his playing well and averaging 55, a lot of people would choose the first option.
We’d choose the second. For all his flaws, 26 year-olds who can average 40 in Tests for England aren’t that common. Despite evidence to the contrary, we think he can push on and become a hardened Test batsman. We’d prefer him to do this from further down the order though.
We’ve no great love for Ian Bell. We’re not pro-Bell. We just think that if you’ve got an experienced Test batsman with a lot of years left in him, you should make the most of him.
But he is a bit irritating. His affected puffed-out chest strut is frankly embarrassing for one thing. He developed it because he decided he needed to have more presence at the crease, but it doesn’t work.
If Bell genuinely swaggered, that would be fine, but he said that this was a conscious ploy when he started doing it which entirely negates the exercise. It looks like what it is – a bluff.
Score a load of runs in tough situations and you’ll have presence whatever you do. Look at Shivnarine Chanderpaul. You can’t swagger when your manufacturer has attached all your joints the wrong way round.
Besides, all he has to say is “bat as long as you can” to get hopeless tail-enders to score centuries. Now, that’s a Lord Megachief. He don’t need no swagger.
He makes swagger his bitch everyday.
I’d like Bell more if he wasn’t a soft ginger shite.
I want to like Ian Bell. I really do. I want them to name an end after him. What taints my Bell experience is the way that he, more than most others, epitomises all that’s gone wrong with English cricket after The Ashes 2005.
The complacency. The attitude that an England shirt is yours to keep. The unjustified swagger. The feeling that the job was done, everyone had OBEs, and could therefore just relax for the rest of their cricketing careers.
Grrrrr unto them. All of them.
No-one wants a repeat of the mid- to late-’90s…but it’s gone too far. Central contracts were a good idea, but now they’re an obstruction to competition.
Mahinda exaggerates for effect, but not all that much.
Why on earth isn’t Owais Shah playing this test match in Bell’s place?
I too think that Bell can make a solid England career for himself, but I also think that a stint on the sidelines might be just what the lad needs to kick-start the second half of his England career.
Ged Ladd –
Agreed. He needs a wake-up call. He needs to go back to Warwickshire and score 1,500 runs. God knows we need him.
Nobody is saying he doesn’t try. But there is something about him that is becoming intensely annoying.
He just doesn’t seem to have the stomach for a fight,
Sorry. I might have had a couple of strong ales by then, and read up on the shower in the WIndies.
ah! bell, changderpaul, chest, joints. wonderful.