How England lured Jacob Bethell away from West Indies

Telegraph

3 days ago

'Jacob is a sponge, so he will have learnt a lot from Virat.'
Michael Powell should know because he was Jacob Bethell's cricket coach at Rugby School. Bethell spent six years there, where Powell and his wife Michelle were guardians to the boy who arrived from Barbados aged 12, with a reference from Sir Garfield Sobers and Brian Lara in his back pocket.
Now he is an England cricketer who has opened the batting in the Indian Premier League with Virat Kohli and marked his first international at his home ground, Edgbaston, on Thursday night with a man-of-the-match performance against West Indies, waving his bat to Powell when he reached 50. In the second ODI in Cardiff on Sunday he has a further opportunity to push for keeping his Test place for the India series.
Powell, the former Warwickshire captain recently made a club life member, was sitting in the chairman's box beaming with pride on Thursday. Bethell has not forgotten his upbringing. He acknowledged afterwards that Powell was the reason why he was in the UK and joined Warwickshire's academy almost as soon as he arrived in this country. He handed over signed shirts for a couple of the pupils at Rugby after the game.
Powell took him to Edgbaston as a wide-eyed 12-year-old and said one day he would play there for England. 'You know what, it felt funny,' he told Telegraph Sport. 'I played under-19s for England with Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan, and Jacob reminds me so much of them. They all use Gunn & Moore bats, and stood out from others their age. Then I see Tres at Edgbaston [working as England's batting coach] throwing balls to Jacob. It's just weird how the stars have aligned.'
Powell took Bethell to the Edgbaston museum to see photos of Brian Lara scoring his 501 at the ground. Bethell stopped for a picture next to a framed one of his mentor. 'We had a laugh about that,' Powell says now.
It used to be that every 10 years or so in English cricket a player would come along with a natural air of permanence at an early age, relishing the scrutiny and pressure of international cricket. The 18 county academies and cricket's pathway are now producing those players more regularly. Think of Joe Root in 2012, Ben Stokes a year later making a hundred in his second Test in Australia and Harry Brook.
Bethell, 21, is the latest with cricket in his blood and a grounding in the game that was fine-tuned on the fields of Rugby. Powell would spend hours on the school grounds where the sport of rugby union was born, hitting balls in the air for the teenage Bethell to dive around and catch. 'You know what? He never, ever dropped a single one. He was a phenomenal fielder. Hand on heart, the first time I saw him swing a bat, I thought he'd play international cricket,' he said.
Bethell arrived at Rugby with a burgeoning cricketing reputation. He joined the Franklyn Stephenson Academy in Barbados aged 11, and was coached by Lara at 12. His grandfather played for Barbados, his father Graham club cricket in Sheffield with Vaughan and the family had strong links and contacts in English cricket.
In 2015, his academy side played Loretto, a touring school from Scotland and Bethell scored a 50. Watching was John Patterson, who worked with Bethell's dad years previously and whose sons were at Rugby, looked after by Powell. He tipped Powell off about Bethell and Rugby beat a number of other public schools offering scholarships because of those links.
Rugby's close ties to Warwickshire helped, too. 'First time I saw him, he didn't have a bat or kit. I threw him some tennis balls and he just cut and pulled them to shreds,' Powell said. 'I later discovered a video of him taken in the back garden in Barbados, where there was a ball on a string hanging up and every morning from 6am he would be out there hitting it. When people say Tiger Woods was born with a golf club in his hands, it applies to Jacob in a cricket sense. But for us it was about supporting him, this young kid growing up a thousand miles away from his parents. It was about pastoral care as well as cricket.'
Like Brook, who went to Sedburgh, Bethell benefitted from a full sports scholarship at a top public school. English cricket relies heavily on the public-school system, skewing the perception of the sport, although there are fears within the ECB that the government's VAT levy will affect the number of scholarships handed out to those like Brook and Bethell who would otherwise have been unable to afford the privilege.
'He would get frustrated because he did not have the strength to pierce the infield so I had to tell him to be patient,' says Powell. 'I remember saying, 'Right now you're getting 20 off 80 balls, but there were 17 dots today that you drove and the fielders cut them off. Soon they will pierce those gaps so there's an extra 68, so that's your 88 off 80 balls.' He was frustrated because the guy at the other end, who was older, was smoking it. I just said in 10 years' time, he will be playing club cricket. They will not be doing what you're doing.'
What Bethell is doing is building on that talent. He had no problem finding the gaps against West Indies. After finding his feet with 20 off 26 balls, he exploded with 62 off his next 23, with eight fours and five sixes.
He recently told the Professional Cricketers' Association magazine, Beyond The Boundaries, that he was spending his time in India facing Bhuvneshwar Kumar swinging the new ball round corners in the nets while training with Bangalore. 'Pretty good prep for red-ball cricket,' he said. 'My technique and the way I bat is very much suited to red-ball cricket. it is a case of becoming more or less expansive depending on the scenario I'm faced with.'
He may have lost his Test No 3 spot to Ollie Pope for the time being, but perhaps the upside of staying in the IPL is his exposure to Indian conditions, and the benefit that will give England across formats over the long term. Just living in the goldfish bowl with Kohli can only help.
'I think he quite enjoys the overseas boys because we're just pretty chill around him,' says Bethell. 'He's definitely got that aura and it's pretty electrifying to walk out to bat with him. I don't want to give away everything I learnt, but obviously you go to India and the first thing you think of is spin. And just the way those batters go about thinking about playing spin. They're pretty clinical in how they pick length and the deliveries they try and hit for four and six. That was nice to have more of a power-game input into my game rather than a bit of touch around spin as well. So then just trying to mesh the two together would help a lot.'
It proves Powell is right about his sponge-like tendencies. 'It is just very rewarding to see him realise his dream,' he added. 'But also go out there and grab it with both hands.'