The ultimate team player – but now Ian Bell needs a score to save his place

After two lean years the hugely gifted batsman is running out of chances and desperately wants a match-winning century

Ian Bell departs after being dismissed four short of a half-century that failed to save England in the second Test against Pakistan (Reuters)

When Ian Bell began batting in Dubai last Sunday he looked a million dollars. His feet moved purposefully, daintily, he was positive but avoided recklessness, the ball came out of the middle of the bat as though it were being magnetically lured to the sweet spot.

This was Bell at his most deceptively alluring. There have not been many occasions lately when he has looked as elegantly imposing as this and you just hoped he did not muck it up. He mucked it up.

He had made 46 handsomely appointed runs in partnership with Joe Root, the golden boy of the hour, and they combined diligence with strike rotation. Without warning – there is rarely any clear signal to Bell’s foibles – he tried to take his bat out of the way of a ball from Zulfiqar Babar which fizzed a bit.

But he did it in such a way, keeping the hands close to the body, which invited danger and the ball accordingly touched the gloves on its way through.

Bell’s supporters, among whom this reporter would like to be counted, point out he and Root salvaged the innings and launched the improbable, if eventually doomed, campaign to draw the match after the loss of two early wickets. In addition, he helped Alastair Cook to lay the foundations for a substantial total in Abu Dhabi which almost led to a superb victory.

But there is the undoubted feeling, now to be erased only by a match-turning hundred any time soon, that Bell is running out of time.

At 33 he should still be in his pomp, among the most richly gifted to have come along in a half-century. His balance and rhythm and sense of timing and placement are lovely to behold and he has a feel for cricket which is often given too little credit.

As the oldest player in the present team, it is therefore obvious that he is nearer the end than the beginning.

However, plenty of players have scored thousands of Test runs deep into their late 30s and Bell always intended to be one of them. That is no longer a given.

For the moment his experience is wanted by England. It is not (quite) just about the runs that he scores but the information he can impart to the rookies.

He is a wonderful team man and ever ready to help out in the nets. He knows about batting and about the situations of batting.

Trevor Bayliss, England’s coach, wants him around but he has heard the suggestions that Bell is ready to call it a day. Bell himself set that particular hare running at the end of the Ashes series in August when he said that he would take a few weeks to take stock. One breather later and he seemed to be replenished.

“I suppose you can only take a player on what he says there,” said Bayliss. “Obviously at the moment we haven’t got a lot of experience in the batting order and I think it’s important we have got some experience in the team.”

There is a fund of goodwill towards Bell, partly because he is obviously so talented, partly because he is a bloody good bloke. He might have played the odd daft shot down the years but he has never been an ounce of trouble. He is the model pro, ready to listen, eager to help.

That syndrome of the odd daft shot has dogged him. It draws criticism and has also buttressed the view that Bell has never quite been the player he promised to be or should have been.

In general, he owes England nothing as 20 Test hundreds and 13,291 international runs testify. Another 507 and he will overtake Kevin Pietersen as the country’s highest international run-scorer across all three formats. There is no certainty that he will get there.

Jimmy Anderson, with whom he has played 85 of his 117 Tests, starting with his first in 2004 (hardly surprisingly they are the only two survivors of that team against West Indies at The Oval) to the most recent, has a long-held respect for Bell.

“He’s been helping the other guys out, trying to get them used to conditions,” said Anderson. “He’s itching to score runs. He wants to get the scores that he knows he can get.

“He’s had a pretty lean six to 12 months for him, so he’s itching to get a match-winning contribution for us – which we know he can, and he knows he can. We hope it comes this Test in Sharjah.”

Unfortunately, Anderson was perhaps being too forgiving. The six to 12 months is a little longer than that. Bell’s most fertile periods as a Test batsman were in 2011 when he scored 950 runs with five hundreds and in 2013 when he made 1,005 runs and scored three hundreds in that summer’s Ashes series. He was sublime in that latter summer, probably did not quite receive the approbation he deserved, but it was the moment his career had been waiting for.

Since the end of that series, stretching back two years, Bell has made 1,200 runs in 24 matches at an average of 30. There have been only two hundreds. It is simply not what is expected. Maybe the relentlessness of it all – 286 international matches, 117 of them Tests, in those 11 years plus nearly 200 games for Warwickshire – have taken their toll. He now has a young family. Objectives change.

Bayliss had sympathy – and a warning: “We need him from that experience point of view but what I’m saying is – and everyone’s fully aware of it – that results count as well, so just because you’ve got experience you’ve got to be performing as well.

“They know that and the selectors and coaches make their decisions based on performances at the top level.”

What everybody wants is for Bell, whenever he goes, to do so on his terms and not at the whim of the selectors. The rest of this winter will determine which.