If he makes his England debut in the Twenty20 series against Australia next month, Jacob Bethell will call upon advice from the world’s greatest living cricketer.
Growing up in Barbados, Bethell became well-acquainted with the island’s most storied son, Garry Sobers. “Through the sporting community, we got to know each other,” Bethell recalls. “My uncle knows him quite well, they play quite a lot of golf. I play a bit of golf with him, chat to him — it’s great, almost regular now.
“There was a lot of flair in his cricket which I try and emulate. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to pick his brain over the years. He’s an absolute legend of the game and legend of a bloke.”
In the 1960s, Sobers played for Barbados alongside Bethell’s grandfather, Arthur. Modern batsmen, Sobers likes to joke with Bethell, have “got it easy” in comparison.
“We have all this protective stuff and the bats are better. He said that the bowlers used to be able to drag their back foot so they ended up bowling from 18 yards — made it even quicker.
“He just says work hard. And he always says watch the ball, just watch the ball. But it’s not so much advice. It’s just nice to chat to him, talking about Test matches that he played in and innings he played and just the way he thinks cricket is so positive. He had so much confidence in himself that he knew he was the best player on the field, which is a strength of mindset, isn’t it? Some of those stories are unreal to hear.”
With blonde streaks in his hair, a laid-back demeanour and the audacity of his stroke play, Bethell has just a touch of the Sobers swagger himself.
“You try to have that same confidence in your own cricket,” he says. “I don’t have quite that same mentality in terms of the way he went about it, but I do play with that inner belief and confidence. And hopefully that shows.”
There are similarities as cricketers, too — in the types of players they are, even if not their credentials. Like Sobers, Bethell is a buccaneering left-handed batsman who also bowls left-arm spin; as a boy, he even bowled left-arm seam too, just as Sobers also did. “I’m definitely an allrounder,” he says, though his batting is currently more advanced.
Last summer, a member of the England management met with Warwickshire to ask if Bethell could be used more prominently. His rare skillset fits within the national side’s embrace of attributes over averages.
The T20 World Cup campaign highlighted England’s dearth of left-handers — particularly in Guyana, when India’s spinners turned the ball away from right-handers. Combining powerful left-handed hitting with spin makes Bethell a prime candidate to be the long-term successor to Moeen Ali, his team-mate with Warwickshire and Birmingham Phoenix.
Bethell is only 20, yet his explosiveness is becoming more common. He thrashed 56 not out from 16 balls, including seven sixes, against Northamptonshire in this year’s T20 Blast. He has made a terrific start to this season’s Hundred, hitting 111 runs from 76 balls while only being dismissed twice.
While he has become a County Championship regular this season, Bethell’s greatest impact has been in the shorter formats. Like Moeen, he has a penchant for attacking spin, especially the ball turning in, from slow-left armers or leg spinners. After opening for England Under-19s, Bethell now occupies a floating role, batting between four and six.
“You come in in so many different situations — the game pretty much dictates what you have to do with the scoreboard and you’ve either got to absorb pressure against spin or take it down. And then you’ve got six-hitting at the back end, clearing the ropes with the field out. That’s one of my strengths.”
These qualities would have been coveted by West Indies, too. The family have been based in Barbados for generations, with the Bethell home in the island’s south-west. “We’re Barbadians.”
Together with abundant beach cricket, Bethell’s early experience in the game centred on the Barbados club scene; he represented the storied Wanderers Cricket Club, which nurtured Kraigg Brathwaite and his predecessor as West Indies Test captain, Jason Holder. While he had affection for England — his father was born here, and Joe Root was among Bethell’s heroes — “growing up, it was West Indies”.
Aged 11, Bethell enrolled in the Franklyn Stephenson Academy. Stephenson, the last man to achieve the allrounder’s double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a County Championship season, invited Brian Lara to the Academy. “He was so impressed,” Stephenson recalls. “He told Jacob that he was better than he was at the age of 11.”
In 2015, just before Bethell turned 12, the Academy had a match against Scottish school Loretto. Playing against boys as old as 18, Bethell scored a half-century and took five wickets.
After the game, Bethell was approached by John Blain, the former Scotland cricketer who was Loretto’s master in charge of cricket. “He was like ‘we want to get you over’.” Blain subsequently passed on Bethell’s details to the former Warwickshire captain Michael Powell, who previously worked for Loretto and was then director of cricket at Rugby School. Aged 13, Bethell then got a sports scholarship to move to Rugby, turning down offers from other schools alerted to his talent.
“I realised that opportunities are better over in England,” Bethell explains. Leaving his parents was “daunting. But it was probably one of the best moves I’ve made on my journey to being a professional. I loved school — like it was pretty much one big sleepover.” Powell and his wife became “second parents” to Bethell, a constant source of advice as he emerged through the Warwickshire age-group system.
At Rugby, Bethell was renowned for his spin bowling and timing with the bat. “A lot of my game was based around rotating the strike and being able to absorb pressure,” he reflects. “I was tiny.”
From the age of 15, Bethell bulked up, setting him on course to be the player that he is today. “As soon as I got bigger, I started hitting the ball harder and the belief just changed. My power game evolved and now that’s my strength.”
One characteristic is a high backlift, which has been compared to those of Sobers and Lara. “I always like having a bit of rhythm in my hands — I feel like it gets my whole body going. And it works well with the trigger. So I just find it gets me in a really nice position, plus it gives me a bit more power, especially with the high backlift to get more leverage.”
Such Bajan flair will soon be seen playing international cricket; most likely, next month. “I would love to play for England — whether that happens in the next 12 months or four years, whatever it is.” And, no matter his white-ball credentials, Bethell’s aspirations extend to the format that Sobers illuminated. “I’ve lived over here for seven years. So the dream is to play Test cricket for England.”
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