Blonde tips, green shoots: Bethell bats beautifully to give England hope

Jacob Bethell raised his bat and surveyed his kingdom, his world, with nonchalant curiosity. His career to date had been a story of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but suddenly tomorrow had come. The future was now the present, and it was chanceless and effortless, beautiful and brutal.

This was the coronation of England’s crown prince, his innings of Enlightenment, the day the vagaries of talent and promise hardened into something meaningful and real. His was the fourth century in three innings, following Joe Root, Travis Head and Steve Smith, three of the best of their generation. This is supposed to be hard. It is hard, as his teammates made abundantly clear – none lasted more than 55 balls. But not if you’re Jacob Bethell.

His 142 not out at 22 years old makes him the second-youngest English men’s player to score an Ashes ton this century, only behind Alastair Cook in 2006. Four of the other five from any era are David Gower, Denis Compton, Len Hutton and Colin Cowdrey. He’s still younger than Ben Stokes was when he made his Test debut, just the sixth English player to score a century across the past four tours. Despite only playing in Melbourne and Sydney, he’s scored more runs in this series than Stokes or Cameron Green, knocking off more in this innings alone than Ollie Pope had across the first three Tests. And, of course, this was his first red-ball century ever.

Bethell is incredibly easy to get giddy about, because it’s really fun to be so clearly at the start of something, wreathed in the innocent joy of endless possibility. Bethell can still be whoever, whatever, he desires. And in a series which has felt like a constant slew of English endings, every fresh modicum of hope splattered by a game of cosmic Whack-a-Mole, this matters.

So let’s get carried away. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, and I’m sold. Let’s give him the keys to English cricket, to England, to the future. Give him the captaincy and coaching gig and probably a knighthood while we’re at it. #BethellforPM. I want to be a Bethell girl in a Bethell world.

He’s always had the look nailed – the hair, the suncream, the back-foot punch. A bleach-blonde dream of pure potential and high elbows, he had spent so long being flown around the world like a luxury accessory, a Patek Philippe cricketer seemingly bound never to leave its box, you suspected he had been hollowed out to meet hold luggage weight limits. Brian Lara famously said Bethell was “better than I was at 11.” Root apparently saw him hit a ball on a piece of string when he was 13 and said “this kid has got something.” He is already England’s youngest men’s captain having overseen the 2-0 T20I victory in Ireland in September (a 100% win ratio).

You have to feel for Pope, condemned to watch his Test future crumble having not reached 50 in any of his five Ashes Tests home or away. Bethell wants to be a top-order player and England have been searching for a No 3 they can trust since Jonathan Trott’s retirement over a decade ago. Perhaps this series would have looked different had he played over Pope throughout, had he been able to play like this in Perth, but it is hard not to see England’s litany of snafus over just the past two days and realise that is somewhere between wishful and fantastical.

Although he has been involved in two across the past year, Bethell has never played across a full five-match series. There is still the bizarre quirk that he averages 9.16 across six Test first innings and, at least overnight, 102.25 in six second innings, including four 50s. He has faced more deliveries in the past two Tests than he did across a whole three-format domestic summer. He has at least five years, perhaps ten, until his theoretical peak. Building a Test career is complex and non-linear even in the face of overwhelming talent, as Jamie Smith is showing. Yet for all it might not make sense, there is no question this is worth trusting.

“I know I’m pretty good, I don’t really need praise if I do well or critique if I’m struggling,” Bethell told Sky before this Test. “Throughout my short career so far, I’ve stayed off [social media] and gone on how I’ve felt and how the people who are most important around the group have felt I’m going. I’ll try and keep it that way for as long as possible.” Cricket is a complicated game we endlessly overcomplicate. But at its best, on days like these, under a glorious shawl of Sydney sun, it just looks so simple.

Photograph by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images