Ian Bell won the 2005 Ashes and still called it his lowest point
England reclaimed the Ashes in 2005 and Ian Bell collected an MBE for his part. Privately he counted it a low point. He averaged about 17 in the series, bagged a pair at The Oval, and later admitted he spent the summer doubting whether he belonged. The following year he answered with three straight centuries.
Bell, born on 11 April 1982, grew up near Rugby and was spotted early. On an England Under-19 tour of New Zealand, Dayle Hadlee called him the best 16-year-old he had ever seen. His first-class debut for Warwickshire in 1999 ended in a duck, but in 2001 he became the county's youngest centurion, at 19 years and 56 days, and its youngest ever capped player.
His entry to Test cricket in 2004 was smooth: 70 on debut against the West Indies at The Oval. Early in 2005 he scored 480 first-class runs in a single April, breaking a 17-year-old record held by Graeme Hick, then hit an unbeaten 162 against Bangladesh, passing a hundred before lunch in a Test, which no Englishman had done since Leslie Ames in 1935. He carried a freakish average of about 297 into the Ashes, and Shane Warne and company quickly deflated it.
The rebound came in 2006. Moved down to number six against Pakistan, he struck centuries in the first three Tests, the first Englishman to manage that since Graham Gooch, and finished the series averaging 93.75. Oddly, England's player of the series award went to Andrew Strauss. The contrast was stark: against Australia he averaged 17, against everyone else close to 68.
The Times called his batting an exquisite rapier, with the cover drive its signature, and he fielded close in with sharp reflexes. He ended with twenty-two Test hundreds and four in one-day internationals, was named the ICC's emerging player in 2006, and won back his place for the victorious 2009 Ashes before a first Ashes century helped England keep the urn in Australia. Dropped in 2015, he played in the Big Bash, passed 20,000 first-class runs in 2018 and retired in 2020.
Source: Ian Bell
