Jacob Bethell and Ollie Pope star in England Test Selection VI: Assignment Hagley Oval

3 minute read

Remember a couple of years ago when Ollie Pope was picked to bat at number three for England even though he’d never batted higher than four in first-class cricket? Well it’s gone so well he’s earned a promotion to number six and also won back the wicketkeeping gloves. This has created an opening in the entry level slot. Enter Jacob Bethell and his zero hundreds in professional cricket.

Who writes your scripts, Rob Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes? We only ask because they’re getting a bit hackneyed.

• Travelling to New Zealand without a spare wicketkeeper and having to ask Ollie Pope to keep wicket? That sounds a bit familiar.
• Asking someone who’s never batted higher than four to bat at number three? Hmm, likewise.
• Picking a young lad with a nondescript-to-poor first-class record because you think he’s got the qualities to perform in Test cricket? Oh, come on. You’ve given us this once, twice, three times before. To be honest it’s probably more times than that. We’ve lost count.

This isn’t Police Academy, you know. How about coming up with some new plot points?

With regards to Pope, there’s not much point retreading old ground when you could just read what we wrote last time – although he does have a stumping to his name now, so we suppose his wicketkeeping credentials have come on significantly since then.

As for Bethell, it’s hard to know what to think. He’s scored 738 first-class runs at an average of 25.44 and other than T20 internationals, where he’s been not out in half his innings, his averages in the other formats are much the same.

We keep seeing comments about how talented Bethell is (a ‘generational talent’ apparently) and we think, how do you know? Don’t you need a meaningful volume of raw data before you start drawing conclusions like that? Graham Gooch once scored 753 runs in a three-Test series. Bethell’s entire first-class run-scoring career doesn’t extend that far yet.

It can work, of course. Some players are just better – or at the very least right on the cusp of being so. South Africa made Graeme Smith captain when he was 22 and for a long time the best route to becoming a Pakistan Test bowler was to make your case as a net bowler.

At the same time, consistency isn’t a quality that wows coaches, simply because it is so hard to observe. The sweetly-timed cover drive catches the eye, whereas unless it’s truly horrendous, false shot percentage will not (although presumably they’ve got the data). This can sometimes mean that batters who ‘look good’ are overpromoted, whereas the shonky-looking need to be that much more effective to break into a Test team – and may therefore arrive offering more substance.

All of this is fun intrigue when a Test match gets underway though. Good luck, Jacob. Maybe you too will eventually earn yourself a number six batting spot and the wicketkeeping gloves.