Moments after the applause in the England huddle at Hagley Oval that signposted Jacob Bethell’s impending Test debut at No 3, the sound system they use to keep training sessions upbeat began blaring out The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. Even for a leadership group that likes a punt, this feels their biggest yet.
Bowlers can burst through with little by way of their back catalogue; bolters elevated on the basis of raw ingredients. England have had a few in their recent past, like Shoaib Bashir – first-class bowling average of 67 when called up – or Rehan Ahmed, a five-fer on Test debut aged 18. Pat Cummins is one Australian example, with nine Shield wickets at 46 when he first pulled on his baggy green in 2011.
But batters are usually expected to have tasted three figures in a first-class game before they get the nod, with Mike Gatting the last England player not to have done so before his debut on a tour of Pakistan in 1978, aged 20. It was not a resounding success, lbw for five shouldering arms to a googly and lbw for six to a full toss. Not that his career – even with the long wait for a first Test century – was insignificant.
Warwickshire’s Bethell, 21, averages 25.44 from 20 first-class matches (including one on loan at Gloucestershire), has passed 50 five times with a highest score of 93 last summer. Number four is the earliest he has appeared and even then only twice. On paper, it barely qualifies him to carry the drinks to the person who carries the drinks in a Test match, let alone stride out to the middle at first drop.
But cricket is not played on paper and England see something special in a left-hander with a strong back-foot game and a Ben Stokes-esque on-drive who bowls left-arm spin and is a whippet in the field. They are not the first. There has been a longstanding, almost universal view within the game that he is destined for the top. Ian Bell called him the best 17-year-old he had seen; Brian Lara saw Bethell when he was 11 and said he was “much better” than himself at that age.
The latter endorsement came when Bethell was still in his native Barbados; a cricket-mad scamp whose grandfather Arthur played first-class cricket for the island and whose father, Graham, played for Sheffield Collegiate in the UK (the club synonymous with Joe Root’s family). Olly Hannon- Dalby, one of his teammates at Warwickshire, remembers visiting Barbados as the senior pro on an academy tour and being taken aback.
“We were at Wanderers Cricket Club and the outfield was so bumpy. Our lads couldn’t get a hand on it in the fielding drills,” Hannon-Dalby says. “But this 13-year-old joined us and was just tearing around, picking it up one-handed and throwing it in. I remember him shrugging: ‘What’s up with you boys? It’s always like this here.’ It was an early sign of his hand-eye coordination and his confidence.”
“He invited us to his family home for a meal. Outside, they have a cricket ball in a sock hanging from a really high beam on a three- or four-metre rope, so a huge arc when it swings. Our guys could hit it three or four times before messing it up, but he kept going and going. He just never missed.
“Not only that, his dad kept shouting random fielding positions and Jacob was middling it to wherever he was told, even though the ball kept swinging back from different angles. It was so, so difficult and pretty crazy to watch.”
A scholarship at Rugby School followed, Bethell consulting with Sir Garfield Sobers, a family friend, before taking up this transatlantic offer. Training with Warwickshire for two hours every day before school, he signed his first senior contract in 2021, at the age of 17. After impressing for England in the Under-19s World Cup that winter, he picked up a £30,000 deal at Welsh Fire in the Hundred.
The rise has been even more accelerated this year, a strong T20 Blast campaign leading to debuts for England’s one-day international and T20 sides and a £256,000 contract in the Indian Premier League auction on Monday. There have been flashes of the talent in an England shirt: 20 runs off an Adam Zampa over in September, two T20I half-centuries on his Caribbean homecoming this month.
“He’s just one of those guys,” says Hannon-Dalby. “A cool cat, quietly confident, funny but also seriously hungry and hard-working. He’s made two international debuts already, just bagged an IPL deal and he is about to play Test cricket. He’ll probably end up marrying a Bond girl.”
It is the type of prediction that seems to follow Bethell, the prodigy without a professional hundred about whom there are yet to be any doubts.
