'True Bear' Bell ready to give back

Ian Bell still has the match ball from the game in which he scored his first century. It was presented to him by Dermot Reeve, the Warwickshire captain at the time, after Bell made a century for the county's Under-11 team on the Edgbaston colts ground, where the senior team now net.

Around the same time, he was one of those rushing on to the outfield at Lord's to celebrate Warwickshire's remarkable victory over Sussex in the 1993 NatWest final. He subsequently wore out his dad's VHS recording of the highlights. He had posters of the likes of Dominic Ostler and Paul Smith on his bedroom wall and remembers the excitement he felt the first time he walked through the gates of Edgbaston almost 25 years ago. One day they will probably name a stand on the ground after him. He might be the finest player the club has produced.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that he has taken to the Warwickshire captaincy with enthusiasm. This is no runners-up prize for Bell. He dreamed of doing this job as a boy and always listed it as one of his career ambitions. Other players may struggle for motivation when returning from long spells in international cricket, but this is a role Bell has always relished. Warwickshire has been the theme that has run through his life.

"I always wanted to give something back to Warwickshire when my England days were over," he says now. "Deep inside, that is really important to me. As a kid, I always wanted to play for Warwickshire. Yes, I wanted to play for England, but Dermot Reeve was a massive hero and Warwickshire has been a massive part of my life."

That is not to say he has accepted his "England days" are over. He hopes the demands of captaincy will stop him obsessing over his own form - "It's not easy to just focus on your own outcomes," he says, "I can focus on other players and tactics now and not just sit there and think 'I can't get back in the England side' if I nick off early" - and give him an incentive to score the volume of runs he will require to win a recall.

While the suspicion remains he could be in territory once occupied by Mark Ramprakash - it did not matter how prolific he was; England had moved on - Bell was assured, in face-to-face meetings with Andrew Strauss and Trevor Bayliss, that the door to a return was still open.

"My scores, since that hundred in Antigua, I respect aren't good enough," he says. "When you're in the top six, your job is to score runs and I was short of runs. I was disappointed but I wasn't angry at the decision.

"I still believe I'm good enough and that I've more to offer. At the top of my game, I'm good enough to get into that top six. Trevor and Straussy reiterated that I still had a future. I walked away feeling as if they still believed in me as a player and if I scored runs, I still had an opportunity. It wasn't the end. I'd love an opportunity to finish on my own terms; I feel I've a couple of good years left in me. I don't feel it's finished.

"But I feel very lucky. I can look back on some really good stuff. To have won the Ashes and got to No. 1 in the Test rankings was amazing. But if it's not to be, I can move on. I'm not worried about it if it doesn't happen.

"There's times early in my career when I should have ground out a few more runs. I was a bit pleasing on the eye. I probably wasn't as selfish as I should have been. But I look back happy with what I gave the team. Sitting in the dressing room at the SCG having a beer with your mates having won the Ashes... that is what I will enjoy more than the individual moments."

Maybe England never got the best out of Ian Bell. Yes, he contributed 22 centuries and nearly 8000 runs in Test cricket and he played in five Ashes-winning teams. It's a record in which to take pride.

But while Bell has, at county level, long carried a quiet authority, he was often portrayed as diffident in an England dressing room that rarely seemed to utilise his tactical awareness and experience.

One theory is that he lacked the confidence to impose himself under pressure or on the biggest stage. Another is that, in a dressing room of large characters - and pretty large egos - the volume drowned out his contribution. "I'm not the loudest bloke in the world," he says. "But I think I was exactly the same in the England and Warwickshire dressing rooms."

Either way, it seems a shame that his acumen was not fully utilised. For Bell was, by and large, brought up on cricket pitches and, in the few opportunities he has so far had to captain at county level - one of them came in the CB40 final at Lord'sin 2010 when he scored a match-winning century - he has looked a class above anyone else on the circuit with the exception of Rob Key. "I love the tactical side of the game," he says, "but I never really had the opportunity with England. The right people captained, though. I'm not complaining."

Bell was tipped for stardom before he started shaving. He played above his age range and benefited from the wisdom of the likes of Reeve - a great mind currently lost to English cricket - and his colleagues in a Warwickshire side who won six trophies in little more than 24 months in the mid-90s. Bell is the inheritor of their traditions. He is steeped in their values and culture. He is, as they say in these parts, "a true Bear".

But, over the last year of his international career, it seemed his seniority was measured only in his number of caps; not in his influence or standing within the team. He lost his 50-over place, then the vice-captaincy and then - after a series of out-of-character drops - his place in the slips. At a time he might have benefited from a bit of support, he was instead demoted. He admits it hurt.

"I should have retired from ODI cricket after the World Cup," he says. "Was I hurt by the vice-captaincy decision? Yes I was. I'd have liked to carry on into the Ashes. I really enjoyed that responsibility and I was pretty gutted. But I understood the change: Joe Root is the future England captain.

"You get to that point when you're worried about runs. You're thinking about your batting when you're at slip. I was desperate for runs and I'm pretty sure that's why I dropped those first two catches in the UAE."

He lost a couple of significant mentors, too. Neil Abberley, the Warwickshire coach who had guided him for two decades, died in 2011 and Graham Gooch left the England set-up at the end of the 2013-14 Ashes. It meant that, when his form deserted him, he had no familiar face to turn to for assistance. He tried a few other coaches - including Gary Palmer, who has worked successfully with Alastair Cook - but has not formed quite the same relationship.

"That was a bit of an adjustment," he says. "I knew Abbers from when I was 11. To have someone I could go back to who knew me so well was very important. Goochy was quite similar. Andy Flower was a good sounding board, too. It was a bit of a shock when they all left."

He admits, too, that he gave off a certain amount of ambivalence towards his own international future at the end of the Ashes when he confessed that he was considering retirement. That, he says now, was the result of weariness and not reflective of a long-term loss of hunger.

"I was out on my feet," he says. "I'd probably lost a little bit of hunger. I was feeling 'there's another net session, another training day' and when you're in the middle of an Ashes, it should never feel like just another day. It's something special. I'd probably lost a bit of those hard yards you have to do. I don't know if I was burnt out but I was tired. That comment came when there were a lot of emotions running through me and, at that point, I didn't know I wanted to carry on. Now I know I do."

It can hardly be a surprise if he was exhausted. This year was the first he was available to participate in Warwickshire's pre-season training since 2002. He has been involved in tours for more than a decade and perhaps, like so many more in the England team that made it to No. 1 in the rankings, was desperately in need of some down time. A refreshed Bell could prove a major factor in a resurgent Warwickshire.

Dougie Brown, the director of cricket, reckons the 2016 squad is the strongest in the club's history. While Bell is reluctant to go quite that far, he does believe they have the strength to compete in all three formats and knows that England call-ups - which could become a major issue at Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire - may not trouble them. But to succeed, they will have to improve the spirit within the dressing room that had, by the end of last season, soured a little.

It might have seemed harsh to depose Varun Chopra as captain. He was, in some ways, ideal. In terms of calm leadership in the heat of limited-overs chaos, he would be hard to beat. But as the leader of a whole club, there is no comparison: within days of being appointed, Bell had devised plans to increase the membership - he and other players phoned lapsed members to invite them back - improve the youth system and change the culture of the club back to what, he believes, it should be. Chopra has accepted the change phlegmatically and Bell has persuaded Gooch to provide a few sessions for the batsmen.

He has also organised for the gym, indoor school and dressing room areas to be redecorated. They now bear the images of many of the great players to have represented the club in the past - and one or two of the current team - with the aim being to reconnect the current squad with the past and inspire young players for the future. If there is a weakness at Warwickshire it is that, for all the strength of the current squad and all the promise of Sam Hain, the youth system isn't producing as profitably as they would like.

"It is no secret that we underperformed last year," Bell says. "For some reason, we lost a bit of the confidence and a bit of the enjoyment you need in a successful side. We looked jaded and disjointed and, when I started, I felt we required a bit of repair work. We had lost a bit of our identity.

"Central to that was instilling a sense of pride and unity back into the club. I want everyone to realise that, when you represent Warwickshire, you are part of something special. You are part of a tradition that goes back to all the great players who have represented us in the past: the likes of Dennis Amiss, Allan Donald, Brian Lara, Nick Knight and many, many more. You are representing them and everything they stood for.

"Maybe, with the transition to the new pavilion and playing in the redeveloped Edgbaston, we lost sight of that for a bit. Our facilities are fantastic - I don't think there's anywhere better, with the possible exception of Lord's, to play or watch cricket in England - but we needed to make them our own. We needed to make Edgbaston our home, not just a stadium that England use from time to time.

"To play for Warwickshire means you play selfless cricket. Individuals don't win you Championships, teams do. So everyone has to buy into what we're trying to do.

"I want to create a culture where we play for one another and we'll do anything for one another. I don't see my job as just leading us to success now, but leaving the club in a place where the next generation can take it on again. The age group teams use the same gym as us; I want them to realise what a special place this is and want to be part of it. I want us to win, yes, but I also want us to get some good young players through for the future."

Whatever his reputation at England level - he sidesteps a question about whether he sees himself as a great player and describes himself instead as "a successful one" - they love Bell at Edgbaston. And it is pretty clear the feeling is mutual. England's loss is surely Warwickshire's gain.