“I remember having two references on my desk – one from Sir Garry Sobers and the other, I can’t recall whether it was [Desmond] Haynes or [Gordon] Greenidge, but it was definitely one of them,” laughs Michael Powell.
The former Warwickshire batter was director of cricket at Rugby School when Jacob Bethell’s application arrived on his desk. Unsurprisingly, given the names involved, it didn’t take him long to realise he had someone extraordinary coming his way from Barbados. And then he saw him play.
“I’ve known him since he was an 11-year-old, and I might be slightly old school but having watched him for all that time, I’ve always seen him as a Test player,” says Powell, no doubt pleased that England’s hierarchy appear to agree with that assessment, given Bethell’s Test call-up for the tour of New Zealand.
“He has fantastic hands. He has got a rhythmical swing of the bat, and that’s born out of him hitting balls in his backyard on the end of a rope swing for hours and hours. It’s ingrained in him. The moment I saw him I just thought, ‘you’ve been born with a bat in your hand, it’s in your blood’.
“He has grown up with that great West Indian heritage, and wanting to emulate [Brian] Lara and co.”
Bethell, who grew up in Barbados before gaining a cricket scholarship at the age of 12, is very much at the vanguard of the next generation of players in this new England era.
Given his versatility with the ball, alongside his skill with bat in hand, he could be a fixture across all formats for the next decade and beyond.
He scored his first international 50 against the West Indies in Antigua last Saturday, and looked every inch the player that England have invested so much faith in, before adding another half century as England began the five-match T20i series with a win.
“The opportunity generally comes first in T20 and white ball cricket,” says Powell. “England have used that as a way of bleeding these players in, and a big reason for that is the international calendar. But it doesn’t matter what format he plays in.
“If someone had offered him the chance to play a Test match at Lord’s for England, or a T20 or 50-over match, then he would have said Test match every time. He has idolised Joe Root in the past because he loves the way he goes about his business.
“Root is first and foremost, a Test player, although he’s a brilliant white ball player as well. It’s the format he sees as the ultimate challenge.”
Still just 21, the player himself has had plenty of the latter in the early years of his professional career at Edgbaston.
Mark Robinson, his coach at Warwickshire, has seen the struggles Bethell has had to go through to get to this point.
“Being a player like Jacob comes with a massive weight of expectation, you can’t get away from that,” he says. “We got him in the T20 team very early [in 2021 and 2022] and he bombed, to be fair.
“That was his first real taste of failure – everything he had touched before turned to gold. Then we wanted to get him in the red ball side, bat him at seven and bowl his fair share of overs, and he got a stress fracture of his back after the first game of the season against Somerset at Taunton.
“In any career, you’re going to have little bumps in the road.
“When you don’t get away, you chase a score, particularly in T20 cricket when you don’t get that time to build an innings. You can suffer a bit from imposter syndrome, you start questioning yourself.”
Powell watched on proudly on Saturday evening, as Bethell scored 57 off 55 balls, savaging anything wide of off stump and manoeuvering the ball skillfully in between as England clawed their way back into the three-match series at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.
He may have been wearing the Three Lions, but there was a distinctly West Indian flavour to some of his shot-making.
“The early footage I saw of him, when we were first looking at getting him to Rugby, was of this small kid batting against bowlers considerably taller than him,” says Powell. “Some of the first footage was of these kids running in and bowling as quickly as they could at his head.
“His early introduction to competitive cricket in Barbados meant he wasn’t getting that many balls he could drive off the front foot back down the ground for four. He had to have the ability to play the short ball and play square of the wicket – it was either that or go and play another sport.
His first chance with England has come in the shorter formats, and eyebrows were raised in some quarters when he was given his Test call-up, having played just 20 first-class matches for Warwickshire. But this is an England side with a keen eye for the extraordinary – and after injury to Jordan Cox opened an opportunity, Bethell will bat at number three in the first Test in Christchurch.
“Given how England have been approaching things, I’m not surprised [by his Test call-up],” says Robinson. “Jacob is someone who makes an impression on everyone he meets. England have had him around the side for a while now, and they know what he’s about. He has that sense of mischief, that sense of fun. But he’s also a fantastic professional.”
The links between Bethell and Root run deep, with their dads having played alongside each other for Sheffield Collegiate in club cricket in Yorkshire.
The former will have to go some to even get near some of Root’s Test achievements.
But, just as the then young Yorkshireman was fast-tracked into national service in the winter of 2012, England may have unearthed another gem in Bethell.
The Barbados kid has the potential to go big in all formats.
