The shark and the pilot fish

On Tuesday afternoon, as England's first day of training at the Gabba drew to a close, Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen were two of the last batsmen to leave the nets. The pair fronted up on adjacent strips, honing their techniques against a succession of Queensland academy bowlers and visualising, no doubt, the scale of the challenge that awaits on Thursday morning, when for the first time in a generation, England begin an Ashes series in Australia with a realistic prospect of departing with the spoils.

The two men have always made an odd alliance in England's middle order, and to watch them side-by-side was like watching the interplay between a basking shark and a pilot fish. Pietersen's stature at the crease was captivating, as he flowed onto the front foot to drive or rocked back to pull, invariably with half an eye monitoring the knot of spectators peering through the netting behind him, and subconsciously milking their approval for every aggressive strike.

Bell, by contrast, was utterly absorbed in his own preparations, as he skitted around the crease in his team-mate's shadow, dealing in dabs, jabs and drives and ensuring that he remained light on his feet at all times. For all the attention he was getting from the crowd, he might as well have been warming up on the other side of town, but that, of course, is just how he likes it. It's how he has always liked it.

After six years and 57 Tests as an England international, nobody bothers anymore to question what makes Bell tick, just as Pietersen's penchant for egomania is also accepted for what it is. "Look at me!" screams KP's body language; "Please don't look at me ..." implores that of Bell, and for half a century of Tests, England have found a way to accommodate both outlooks in their middle-order. Right at this moment, however, and for perhaps the first time in the international careers of the two players, the over-riding squad mentality is leaning towards Bell's way of thinking.

On Monday, Brisbane's Courier-Mail newspaper denounced England as "the Invisible Men", with the veteran journalist, Robert Craddock, bemoaning their refusal to appear at official functions (an agreement that was struck prior to the tour), or grant one-on-one interviews with local journalists - the first time that has happened in more than 25 years, apparently. "You felt like saying: 'Hey boys, this is Brisbane, not Beirut'," Craddock wrote. "Sometimes you can want something too much."

Whether Pietersen is entirely enamoured of such a defensive tactic is debatable. His Twitter buddy, Shane Warne, recently declared that he is an "outcast" in the England squad, and while Andy Flower moved swiftly to deny that that is the case, Pietersen is nevertheless the one England player who has broken ranks in the pre-series non-aggression pact, with his assertion that "cracks are appearing" in Australia's team, and specifically in the authority of Ricky Ponting's leadership.

But whether or not Pietersen is fully comfortable within the set-up is not, at this moment, the over-riding concern for England, because right from the moment his experiment with the captaincy was curtailed two years ago, the health of the team has no longer depended on him setting the agenda. He may have excelled on the last Ashes tour with 490 runs at 54.44, but that output alone couldn't avert a 5-0 whitewash. Conversely, he hasn't made a century in 16 Tests since March 2009, in which time Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss have cemented their authority as captain and coach, and England have not lost any one of their six series, including of course the last Ashes.

That captain-coach authority has been in evidence ever since England set foot in Australia. For the first time in 45 years they won their opening fixture of an Ashes tour, thanks in no small part to Strauss's hundred against West Australia in Perth, and last week their ten-wicket trouncing of Australia A confirmed their readiness for one of the toughest assignments in the English sporting calendar. But as a line is drawn under the events of the first month, who do we see peeping out from the top of the tour averages? None other than the quiet man Bell, whose meticulous 192 in Hobart was a statement of intent the like of which he has rarely produced for England.

It's hard to gauge what the Aussies make of Bell - except for not a lot. Warne has habitually derided him as "The Sherminator", a reference to the uber-geek anti-hero of his favourite gross-out movie, American Pie, and in the mind's eye he remains the wide-eyed innocent who shrivelled in the spotlight of the 2005 Ashes, the boy whose first-ball duck on the defining fifth day at The Oval completed a pair that he has spent the rest of his career living down. On the very same day, Pietersen sent his own reputation into the stratosphere with his balls-to-the-wall 158, and regardless of the two men's returns in recent months, the gulf in expectations has remained more or less constant ever since.

There is certainly no question which England batsman will be regarded as the Alpha Male come Thursday morning. "It's very important to keep Pietersen down, because we've seen him in the past the damage he can do," said Simon Katich earlier in the week. "All it might take for him is one or two good shots, and all of a sudden he's got the chest out and he's going, because that's the sort of player he is. There's no doubt that when the crowd's going and there's a buzz and there's something on the line, those sort of guys lift, so we've got to be wary of that."

If Australia's strategy hinges on the neutering of Pietersen, and the shock selection of the left-arm spinner Xavier Doherty would imply that it is a significant part of their plans, then England as a whole will probably not mind in the slightest. On the one hand the extra attention risks refuelling the ego that is so critical to Pietersen's well-being; on the other hand, it ignores the fact that Bell is never happier than when slipstreaming a more prominent colleague, as shown both by his tendency to score centuries when others have also reached three figures (as was the case for the first nine of his 11 hundreds), and also his statistical preference for the middle order, where he can bat reactively rather than set the agenda, whether the scoreline is 4 for 3, or 400 for 3.

That's not to say, however, that Bell is incapable of taking the leading role within a partnership. As long ago as Faisalabad on England's 2005 tour of Pakistan, he made his fellow centurion Pietersen look like a novice as he effortlessly gobbled up the scoring opportunities while his team-mate looked to thrash boundaries, and more recently, his impeccably paced 140 at Durban gave England the impetus to inflict an innings defeat on South Africa.

As for his specific ability to dominate bowlers, last week at Hobart he filleted Steven Smith's Ashes prospects, as he danced down the pitch to five of his first six deliveries, and eased him for 48 of the first 57 runs he conceded. Even in 2006-07, while his team-mates crumbled around him, Bell tried to front up with a half-century in four of the five Tests, including England's first of the campaign during their first-innings meltdown at Brisbane. His failure to convert any of those starts to three figures was inevitably attributed to his suspect temperament, but at the age of 28, he's already got more hundreds (11) than those bywords for English fragility, Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick, managed between them (8).

Like Pietersen, Bell is about to embark on his fourth Ashes campaign, which is half as many as Ponting, but still twice the tally of almost every other member of the Australian team. He's been around longer than Michael Hussey, whose place is probably under more scrutiny than any batsman on either side, and even Katich, who made his debut as long ago as 2001, has never yet taken part in an Ashes series in Australia.

"I feel a better player than the last time on this tour," Bell said after his Hobart hundred. "Over the last 18 months I think my game has started to really take shape improve from the kind of cricketer I was last time I was out here." The management clearly agree. After missing the Pakistan series with a broken foot, Bell quickly usurped last summer's flavour of the month, Eoin Morgan, a player whom the Australians respect deeply following his brilliant one-day hundred at the Rose Bowl in June.

The main reason for his swift return is that, all throughout his career, Bell has possessed the pure batsman's instinct to make every start count. Prior to his crushing at the hands of Warne and McGrath in 2005, for instance, his Test average had been an unwieldy 297, courtesy of two unbeaten knocks against Bangladesh and a 70 on debut against West Indies.

Like his runs in the recent warm-up games, such imposing statistics will count for nothing when the real action begins on Thursday morning, and yet, they are an indicator of the riches on offer if he gets the start of which he is capable. With the peripheral pressures eased by England's downbeat approach to the series, and Warne nothing more than a distant tweet in the commentary box, the coming weeks could well mark the turn of the Sherm.