Ian Bell

Ian Bell, much admired by the purists, who could swoon over his cover drive when he was in full flow, filled English cricket with elegance in a career that brought him over 13,000 runs from a little under 300 international games, and a stack of first-class runs for Warwickshire.

A former England Under-19 captain, Bell was earmarked for greatness well before he was drafted onto the England tour of New Zealand in 2001-02 - where he didn't get a game. When he made his Test debut in 2004, he was in the middle of a county season where he made nearly 1500 runs. The expectation that he would do great things persisted when he made a fine start in national colours, with 17 scores of over 50 in his first 25 Tests - despite just 171 in ten innings against Australia in the landmark 2005 series.

Soon, though, criticism grew that Bell's most fluent early efforts tended to come when the pressure was off. In South Africa in 2009-10, he set about changing those perceptions. A perfectly paced century while batting at No. 6 in Durban set England up for an innings victory that was among their finest overseas performances for a generation, and he surpassed that effort in the next Test, in Cape Town, with a back-to-the-wall 78 that saved the match and ensured a share of the series. On the 2010 tour of Australia, he continued to save his best for when the chips were down; he finished the tour on a high with his maiden Ashes hundred in Sydney and a reputation transformed.

After he averaged more than 65 in five successive series, including the 2010-11 Ashes, he was brought back down to earth by Pakistan's Saaed Ajmal in 2012 in the UAE, where he managed only 51 runs in six innings. That year was a largely forgettable one in Tests for Bell and England, though pride was salvaged with a first series win in India in over 25 years. That victory was sealed in Nagpur, where Bell's second-innings hundred made certain of the requisite draw.

In 50-over cricket, Bell made an immaculate transition to opener in 2012, having been tried in the position in 2008 with less than spectacular results. That success continued into 2013, with his third ODI hundred in lofty Dharamsala, although England were thwarted in their attempts to win global silverware in the Champions Trophy final, and Bell was a casualty of their grim World Cup campaign in 2015, when he seemed unable to translate his talent into the bold strokeplay required.

His reputation for not quite producing when England needed him in Test cricket, meanwhile, was all but banished by a series-defining performance in the Ashes of 2013 where he scored centuries in each of England's three wins, and was the Player of the Series.

However, Bell struggled to maintain his form in the return Ashes series in 2013-14, when England were monstered by Mitchell Johnson, and averaged just 26.11. In 2015, he then endured a run where he passed 1 only three times in ten Test innings, and he averaged about 26 again in the 2015 Ashes. After the year-end tour to the UAE he was dropped, following which he was appointed captain of Warwickshire.

Though England recognition did not come again, Bell enjoyed a fruitful start to his county captaincy, guiding the club to the Royal London One-Day Cup in 2016, before claiming another T20 trophy with Perth Scorchers in the Big Bash. He did not make a Championship century as Warwickshire were relegated in 2017, and he stepped down as captain towards the end of that season. The next year, as if freed by the lack of pressure to get back into the England side, he made over 1000 runs in Warwickshire's promotion season - including five hundreds, two of which came in a match against Glamorgan at Edgbaston. The next season was lost to injury, and 2020 was Bell's last.