Birth of a Classy Batsman

Happy Birthday Ian Ronald Bell

On April 11, 1982, Ian Bell was born at West Midlands, England. He has been recognised as a classy batsman, already during his early stages of domestic cricket. He played his domestic cricket for Coventry and North Warckshire Cricket Team. Made his International debut in 2004, for both Tests and ODIs, always from his starting point of the career, been consistent in his performances. He is a great batsman but got his career end little early. He has been on limelight since 2006 but many criticized him for his poor convertion rate of fifties into hundreds, until 2009 where against the tour of South Africa he made some crucial runs. In ODI cricket, he used to play run a ball innings in each and every match. 

One of the greatest in cover drives and plays shots down the line, often moves his front leg according to the line of the ball, and just with fours, he creates ruckus and pressure among the opponent bowlers. But he had a problem, that after getting to a particular milestone, he starts to play shots across the line, trying to attack bowlers ( even in test cricket ), and in the pursuit, he loses his wicket. Many instances, where his natural game is affected by his mentality of scoring quick runs after getting set. Every batsman in the world, tries to do this, gets success while Ian Bell, failed in each and every occasions. His game is a pure bliss to watch, and for cricket fans, the drive shots he plays to the boundary, is an eye candy. He hits sixes rarely, but his natural game doesn't require more of sixes.

He scored around 7727 runs in Test cricket, with an average of 42. He scored 22 hundreds and 46 fifties with an highest score of 235. In One Day Internationals, he scored 5416 runs at an average of 38 with just 4 hundreds and 28 fifties with an highest score of 141. During Ashes tours, he has been recognised as one of the greatest and shows his best performance. Also another fact is that, during 2015, he became the leading run scorer in One Day Internationals for England but it was broken by Eoin Morgan and currently is in 3rd position. 

During 2015, he has been dropped from England squads, and from there, he started to play domestic cricket. It shows in some cases, a career starts with playing domestic cricket and also ends with domestic cricket. But except very few English Batsman, others have played cricket for England, till around 31-32 years of age, and the age limit for playing international cricket changes respect to their cricket board. People who watched effective cricket during 2007s, will definitely knew him.