Whenever a new-age batting superstar arrives fully formed, it’s usually the weird stuff that catches the eye.
It’s the things they can do routinely that those in previous generations wouldn’t even conceive of, your flicks, your ramps, your switch-hits. Jacob Bethell has all of those, and yet, when you watch him, that’s not what stands out. As he blazed away to 82 from 53 in the first game of the Harry Brook era, it was the strokes that would have fitted in just as neatly in 1985 as 2025 that marked him out as special. He plays the shots everyone else does, and yet they look different, they feel different. The lines are cleaner, the shapes more defined, the sounds crisper. It’s hard to describe; better, simply, to watch.
Against West Indies, the best was a whip-crack pull shot off Alzarri Joseph, who troubled Bethell at times with his 90mph bouncers, but found himself deposited, easy as you like, over midwicket. This wasn’t flash, just fire. Just as pleasing was the innings’ pacing, Bethell gliding to 28 from 33 before crunching 54 off his last 20. This was the deceptively hard role of the ODI No.6 played to perfection. Often there’s time to spare and yet also no time to waste, balancing rebuilding and accelerating, knowing that an ill-judged gear shift in either direction could mean momentum lost or a collapse caused. Twice he has batted there, and twice he has made fifty. He must never bat any lower again.
A sensational innings from Jacob Bethell 👏#JacobBethell #EngvWI pic.twitter.com/O3xsjy7Jdj
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) May 29, 2025
This was an important innings, not for how Bethell is viewed by the England hierarchy, who already adore him, but to make his talent clear to the soon-to-be-adoring home public. Look at the player profile and you’ll see domestic averages below 30 and a zero in the centuries column. Watch him for five minutes and the class becomes clear. There were sparks but no fifties against Australia last summer, and his New Zealand pyrotechnics, coming in the dead of night on the other side of the world, had little chance of breaking through. This, at the start of the home summer with the storylines still to be written, established Bethell as a main character.
Even the lack of a professional hundred begins to make sense, his brilliance so obvious that a statement score isn’t needed to confirm his potential. At every stage, his elevation has come early. Ian Bell described him as the best 17-year-old he had ever seen, and Bethell played a small part in winning the County Championship at the same age. A few months later, having just turned 18, he carved South Africa for 88 from 42 as England reached the Under-19 World Cup final for the first time since 1998. He and Rehan Ahmed are the only two English 18-year-olds to feature in The Hundred. Then, in 2024, a breakthrough summer, and now this. Had he been slightly less good, he would have batted at No.5 for Warwickshire through the early County Championship block and made a couple of three-figure scores. As it was, he was in India, pushing his way into RCB’s first XI and adding Virat Kohli to his growing number of acolytes.
It was perfectly timed from another point of view, launching the start of one era just as another is set to reach its defining point. You think back to the other great arrivals: Harry Brook mullering hundred after hundred in Pakistan and New Zealand before the best Ashes series since the best Ashes ever. Joe Root, instantly at ease, navigating a Nagpur pudding to guide England to one of the great series wins. Jonny Bairstow, with a new age helmet and his Yorkshireman’s rage, blitzing England to a white-ball win that kept India winless through 2011. And of course, Kevin Pietersen, with similar streaks of blond and daredevilry, the wildcard that could transform a worthy team into a world-class one. Bethell’s frosted tips have now been replaced by something more natural. He means business.
And so to the great Test debate. Bethell, naturally, is at ease. “I obviously played in New Zealand as a replacement for a replacement,” he said today. “So whatever happens, it will be, and when the time comes, it will be fine.” How the saga has played out serves as a lesson in how time and runs can erode seemingly immutable truths. Bethell seemed inked in at the end of the New Zealand series, but having not played for England in the interim, and with Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope tonning up against Zimbabwe, the question was, ‘Is there really a way to fit Bethell into the side?’
Over the next few weeks, it could easily transform into ‘How could they afford not to?’
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