Save Our Bell - Pull the Other One

WHY ENGLAND'S NO4 DESERVES A RUN

"I hope his confidence will recover," confided a fellow hack after Ian Bell was caught at slip first ball to complete a pair on the final day of the Ashes. "But I'm not sure it will." The Spin disagreed at the time, but is not quite so bullish now. Because the talk in Pakistan right now is of moving Kevin Pietersen up to No4, dropping Bell and bringing in Paul Collingwood. It would be a magnificently awful piece of timing.

First things first. Bell should never have played against Australia. The Spin argued this all along on the basis that long-term planning had to take second place to winning back the Ashes. Graham Thorpe should have been at No4 - he would almost certainly have scored more than Bell's 171 runs in 10 innings - to break up the flashing blades of Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen, with Bell waiting his turn for the subcontinent. Well, he's there now. And England must treat him properly by giving him the three Tests in Pakistan at least to feel comfortable with the varied demands of the No4 position.

It might be a big statement at this stage, but the chances are Bell will finish his Test career with more than 8,000 runs and an average of 45-plus. He is a long-term investment, and while the Ashes came around too quickly for him, at least he now knows what it's like to bat against Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. Danish Kaneria and Mohammad Sami won't seem half as daunting.

But Bell is one of the quieter members of the squad, a 23-year-old with the features of a teenager. In Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy noted of Farmer Boldwood that "His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once." There is something of the same vulnerability about Bell (remember the way he was fooled by Warne's straight one at Lord's?). To drop him now would be to risk a far more mortal blow to his confidence than his Ashes experience.

Yes, there are technical concerns, the main one being that he gets out to regulation deliveries outside off-stump. But there is steel too: the 70 he made on Test debut against West Indies was gutsy, and the easy runs he took off Bangladesh demonstrated a ruthlessness that is traditionally missing from young English batsmen.

Now, the writing might be on the wall. Pietersen batted second wicket down in the current warm-up game at Rawalpindi, while Bell came in at No6 after Paul Collingwood. Bell made 2, and his only consolation was that Pietersen scored the same while Collingwood didn't score at all.

But we should not be in the position of comparing and contrasting, as any English cricket journalist from the 1980s and 1990s spent most of his time doing. There should only be one debate about the Test team, and that concerns the replacement for Simon Jones. The Save Ian Bell campaign begins here.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

EXTRAS

The Spin might have given the impression in recent weeks that the Australians have consigned the Ashes not merely to the dustbin of history, but to the outer reaches of oblivion. It is now more than happy to correct this slur. The truth, it seems, is that defeat to England has affected them more deeply than even a smug cricket column could have imagined.

Carl Jung wrote that "neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering", the idea presumably being that obsessive thoughts mask the real problem. But until now the Spin had never heard of Bowdenitis, a terrible condition which convinces the sufferer that life's difficulties can be blamed on a New Zealand umpire with a crooked finger. Step forward Ricky Ponting, whose Ashes diary contains the claim that Bowden's decision not to give Simon Jones out lbw to Brett Lee in England's second innings at Edgbaston probably cost Australia the game, and, implicitly, the series.

Fair-minded as ever, the Spin was happy to hear the evidence. "It was as plumb as could be, yet Bowden said not out," explained Ponting. "I was pretty agitated when Bowden said the ball was going down leg." Jones, it is true, was stone dead. And, yes, the fact that he and Andrew Flintoff added two more runs for the last wicket - England's precise margin of victory - must still grate. And, granted, we're talking about an Ashes diary here, ghost-written in the heat of the moment.

But Ricky! If you are honestly saying that Australia lost the Ashes because an umpire failed to trigger England's No11, then you should also ask yourself the following question: how was it that Jones was allowed to add 49 runs with Flintoff before Australia even managed an appeal against him? Come on Ricky, it was that partnership which turned a possible Australian win into a likely defeat, not Bowden's howler. Next week: how the dazzle of the Nottingham sun robbed Australia of certain victory in the fourth Test at Trent Bridge.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

THE WEEK IN CRICKET

Shoaib Akhtar threatens to sue the broadcasters ESPN-Star India after they referred to his late arrival at a training camp in Lahore by saying that "a dog's tail will never straighten" ... "What they said about me is tantamount to defamation and I've received numerous calls from Pakistan and India, and others thought it was disgusting too" moans Shoaib, who refuses to accept an apology from the company ... Marlon Samuels hits 257 and takes seven wickets as West Indies come close to beating Queensland in the opening game of their tour of Australia ... Pakistan will be without their all-rounder Abdul Razzaq for the first Test against England at Multan - and possibly the second at Faisalabad - because of an elbow injury ... Their 16-man squad contains five spinners, including Mushtaq Ahmed ... Andrew Strauss looks likely to miss the third Test at Lahore because his wife Ruth is due to give birth on November 28, the day before the game ... India hammer Sri Lanka by eight wickets with almost 30 overs to spare at Mohali to go 2-0 in the seven-match one-day series ... The deposed captain Sourav Ganguly fails to make the cut as India's selectors name their squad for the next three games ... South Africa make it 11 straight ODI wins in a row - a national record - with a 19-run victory over New Zealand at Cape Town ... Ireland win the Intercontinental Cup following a smart declaration in the three-day final against Kenya in Windhoek ... Ireland closed their first innings on 313 for 4, still 88 behind, before bowling Kenya out for 156 second time round and chasing down 245 for the loss of only four wickets ... South Africa go three-up with two to play thanks to a four-wicket win over New Zealand in the third ODI at Port Elizabeth ... The chairman of the ECB, David Morgan, says he supports a return to three-day, one-divisional cricket in the county championship ... Mahendra Singh Dhoni smashes 183 not out off 145 balls - the highest score by a wicketkeeper in ODI history - to inspire India to a six-wicket win over Sri Lanka at Jaipur ... England are rescued from the depths of 60 for six by a Marcus Trescothick century in the opening game of their tour of Pakistan against a Patron's XI at Rawalpindi ... They declare on 256 for 9, before James Anderson and Shaun Udal (three wickets each) reduce the Patron's XI to 208 for 9 at tea on the second day ...