The 21-year-old has made a promising start to international cricket ahead of his maiden Test tour
Cameron Ponsonby13-Nov-2024Good players think Jacob Bethell is good.Glenn Maxwell is one of them. After a stint at Warwickshire last season, Maxwell, a maverick of today, recognised Bethell as a maverick of tomorrow and stuck him under his wing.Cut to the Australia ODI series just over a year later and the two were competing against each other. Maxwell dismissed Bethell with a rank long-hop that Bethell managed to lob to point, prompting unusually animated celebrations from the Aussie.”He’d said that if I got him out he’d retire,” Bethell recalls with a smile. “So I think him getting me out, he was like, okay now it’s your turn to retire.”Sporting a rascal haircut that’s bringing back Beckham and the Backstreet Boys all in one, Bethell is a modern cricketer on the field, with a noughties aesthetic off it. Or, as the 21-year-old born in 2003 would likely describe it himself: vintage.Despite his youth, Bethell is a player that England have been aware of for years. Four years ago, Ian Bell described Bethell as the best 17-year-old he’d ever seen. In 2022, he made 88 off 42 in against South Africa in the 2022 U19 World Cup. In 2023, he announced himself as a spectacular fielder with a viral catch in the T20 Blast against Yorkshire, and in 2024 he hit the fastest fifty in Birmingham Bears history, making 56* off 16.In white-ball cricket, Bethell was picked on performances and has backed it up, making half-centuries in both his brief T20i and ODI careers. But in red ball, Bethell’s Test selection was purely on potential. Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, two good players, liked what they saw.On the surface, it is even more left-field than the likes of Rehan Ahmed, Shoaib Bashir and Josh Hull. None of whom had any body of work behind them to suggest they were either good or bad. Bethell, on the other hand, has played twenty first-class matches, sporting an average of 25.44 with zero centuries. Across the 2024 season, he mainly batted at No.6, averaging 31.06 across the season with four fifties.”I don’t know what the chances of me actually playing are,” Bethell said. “If I do end up playing, then it’ll be time to prove that I can play red-ball cricket.”Jacob Bethell poses in front of his family, friends and fans•Getty ImagesBethell hasn’t spoken with McCullum and has not been told what role he is expecting to play across the tour. If it’s purely a learning experience, then it is one both England and Bethell will benefit from. Earlier this tour, Jordan Cox described the seven-match T20 trip to Pakistan he went on in 2022 as teaching him more than his entire five years of county cricket had combined.”To be around the likes of Stokesy, Rooty – I’ve watched Brooky go about his business more, I really enjoyed watching him in the summer. Just being around the guys and learning off them will be really good,” Bethell explained.But if Bethell leapfrogs his way into the XI through impressing in training or injury elsewhere, it could threaten to throw out off-kilter selection entirely. Unlike for bowlers, whose rapid ascension can be credited to being blessed with a certain wingspan or height – which while frustrating for others who don’t fit the mould, at least gives them a reason for their omission – Bethell’s selection would be purely on the feeling that he is . And how do you recreate that if you’re 27 and churning innocent runs for Gloucestershire? How do you maintain a semblance of meritocracy?”As cliche as it sounds,” Bethell said earlier this year, “it doesn’t really matter what anyone says about you. Because if you don’t go out and perform, they’ll soon be chatting about the next person.”England’s selection could be genius, or it could lead them to the road that Bethell himself laid out. If he doesn’t perform, the temptation will be to soon move on to the next. Marking his card before he deserved it, making his initial exposure to Test cricket damaging rather than beneficial.Earlier on this trip, fast bowler John Turner spoke about the unusual feeling of being one of the players blessed with being part of England’s selected few.”You see guys doing really well in county cricket, and not necessarily getting opportunities in the national setup,” Turner said. And you feel for them, it’s tough grinding away and almost you’re not tall enough or not big enough, and you’re being labeled as that’s why you’re not going to succeed. But on the flip side, I’m fortunate enough to be benefiting from this and hopefully just make the most of it and take whatever opportunity I’m given.”Bethell, rightly, has supporters in many corners. At the Kensington Oval for the first T20 of the series, he estimates there were close to 150 friends and family in the ground supporting him.”Pretty much anyone I knew growing up,” he said. “It was really cool.”His white-ball returns so far have proved to England that they have the player they always hoped they would, it’ll soon be time to cross their fingers and hope Bethell proves them right with the red ball as well.
