Cricket: Time for English Prodigy Bell to Toll on the Big Stage

It felt like the ultimate character test. Take the most placid, methodical and talented young batsman in the land and swamp him with praise. Inform him, while he is still in his teens, that he is the finest example of English batsmanship for half a century. Then watch him cope with his fate.

Ian Bell, benign and freckled of face, ever so decent in manner, always seemed too dependable a type to be jolted wildly off course by the assertion that here was a young lord of batsmanship, a man destined to rank alongside Hobbs, Hammond, Hutton - the three great Hs, although in Sir Leonard's case not without a few elocution lessons.

But Bell's germination has been slower than predicted. While the media crowed two summers ago that he was a single hundred away from an England debut, he lived off scraps. Last season saw a tentative recovery, although it was more marked in the frenetic atmosphere of one-day cricket where there was less time to reflect upon his impending greatness.

Bell is fresh from a run-strewn winter in Australia, for the University of Western Australia. He has a tinge more sharp-eyed worldliness about him. And, perhaps most importantly, at the grand old age of 22-and-a-bit he can reflect upon the heady predictions gone by.

"At the time it felt fine," he said. "Everything had gone smoothly. I'd flown through England Under-14s to Under-19s, I was part of the England academy and I had averaged more than 60 in my first county season. I felt privileged.

"But the publicity made me a bit of a target. There hadn't been a 19-year-old batsman in England with this publicity for a long time. As a youngster I had dreamed of an England career and all of a sudden people were writing that it was not too far off. Maybe it just nudged my concentration a bit.

"I didn't object to the label. I still believe in my own ability. I'm only 22. But the county circuit is full of good pros. I had set a high standard and it was not easy to go out there and do it all the time.

"I kept reading that I was only a hundred or two away from playing for England. I wanted to score hundreds so badly that perhaps I put pressure on myself. The county circuit is full of old pros and they tried to add to the tension. There was a lot of bowling just outside my off stump, testing my patience."

Bell draws positives from a tough baptism. "When I get in the Test team I will have a good enough game to stay there and to stay there for years," he said. "I won't have got there too young with my game still not fully developed."

And life has not been all bad. There was a gold award in the last Benson & Hedges Cup final, in 2002, a composed unbeaten 65 as Warwickshire beat Essex - and what Wisden called "his grandest showcase yet." He recalled: "It was my first big crowd at Lord's and I loved the environment. Shaun Pollock bowled a great opening spell to get rid of Nasser Hussain and that set the tone for the day.

"I would back myself in any form of the game and hopefully I'll be a future international in both forms of it. But one-day cricket can relax you because you have to respond to the demands of a particular game. Perhaps I started looking too far ahead rather than breaking it down. I still have ambitions, but I'm concentrating on simple things like how I'm going to play the next ball.

"I can't wait for the season to get into full swing. But I'm not thinking about England, I'm thinking about Gloucestershire [today]. I've set myself targets, I look at the stats but you can't gaze too far ahead."