What is it about Ian Bell? By which I mean, why does the poor fellow arouse such animosity? No other player in the current England team sees his failures magnified and successes downplayed to such an extent. Even when he bats well, his critics use this as evidence that, damn it, he should be batting like this all the time. Perhaps today’s splendid 199 against South Africa will quieten the critics. But if so, I suspect it will do so only temporarily.
A friend suggests that Bell is the victim of the “Henman effect”. That is to say, he’s a nice, middle-class public schoolboy (Rugby in Bell’s case) whose demeanour is the opposite of the swagger or blue-collar defiance that’s more in vogue with the times. There may be something to this, though it’s worth noting that Alastair Cook, another nice middle-class lad, does not face the same level of opprobrium.
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