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English
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England
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ENG
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Ian Bell
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Cricket_no_picpng
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Right-handed batsman (RHB)
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Right arm medium (RM)
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14
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912
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3965
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2/7
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162
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17
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1
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6400
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0
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0
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1/33
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16/0
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12
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304
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3800
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0/2
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75
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34
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3
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300
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0
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3-9
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2/0
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15 April
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2006
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MBE (born
11 April 1982 in
Coventry ,
West Midlands ) is an
English Cricket er. He plays
County Cricket for
Warwickshire County Cricket Club .
After a single appearance for Warwickshire's second team in late April
1998 , Bell's next matches at senior level were with the
England Under-19 Cricket Team on their tour of
New Zealand that winter. He made 91 in the first innings of the first "Test", and 115 in the first innings of the third;
Dayle Hadlee was moved to declare Bell the best 16-year-old he had ever seen. Bell played in several more Under-19 series, captaining the team at home against
Sri Lanka in
2000 , in their
2000 /
01 tour of
India , and for the first match at home against
West Indies in
2001 .
By this time Bell had made his
First-class debut, appearing in a single match for the Warwickshire first team in April
1999 , but was out for a
Duck in his only innings and played no further part at that level until 2000/01, when he followed on from his Under-19 matches by playing for
England A against the
Leeward Islands in the
Busta Cup tournament game in
Anguilla .
Bell was brought into the full
England Test Squad to cover for the injured
Mark Butcher on the
2001 /
02 New Zealand tour, but a poor run of form at domestic level - he
Averaged just 27.49 over the next two English seasons - meant that he had to wait a little longer for his
Test Match debut. He got his chance in the
2004 series against West Indies, when he made 70 in his only innings. Despite this success, and a domestic season that brought him 1,714 runs at 68.56 including six centuries, Bell was not selected for the tour of
South Africa the following winter.
In
2005 , Bell enjoyed a superb start to the season, scoring 480 first-class runs in April alone to break
Graeme Hick 's 17-year-old record. He was recalled to the England team for the two-Test series against
Bangladesh ; England's crushing
Innings Victories in both Tests allowed him only two chances to make an impression, but he grasped the opportunity with both hands. In the first Test at
Lord's , Bell made 65 not out, and in the second at
Chester-le-Street he scored 162 not out, in the process becoming the first Englishman since
Leslie Ames in
1935 to score over 100 runs before lunch in a Test match. This meant that after three Test matches, he had the absurd
Batting Average of 297.
For the
2005 Ashes Series , three players (Bell,
Graham Thorpe and
Kevin Pietersen ) were in the running for two spots in the team, and Bell and Pietersen were preferred to Thorpe. Bell failed in the first two matches, at
Lord's and
Edgbaston , but in the third Test at
Old Trafford he overcame early struggles against
Shane Warne to post a half-century in each innings. However, he only scored six runs in four
Innings in the fourth and fifth Tests, leaving him with a batting average for the series of only 17.10, by far the lowest of the English batsmen.
Despite failing against
Australia , he was included in the 17-man squad for the winter tour of
Pakistan . There was speculation in the press that he wouldn't be included in the Test team, but when
Michael Vaughan was injured before the first Test, Bell got another opportunity. He took it, scoring a
Century and two half-centuries in the three-match series, and becoming England's top scorer in the series with 313 runs at an average of 52.16. He also took his first Test wicket with his part-time
Bowling .
This form on the subcontinent continued on
February 18 ,
2006 in
England 's first warm-up game prior to the Test series against
India . Bell top-scored with 78 at the
Brabourne Stadium ,
Mumbai . He couldn't maintain this form into the test series where, in 6 innings, he only scored 131 runs at an average of just under 22. With Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick to return for the Sri Lanka coupled with the good form of Paul Collingwood and the emergence of Alastair Cook some are questioning his place in the side.
His brother Keith, born two years later, plays amateur cricket for
Staffordshire , and has also played seven games for the Warwickshire Second XI.
In the 2006 New Year Honours List, Ian Bell was awarded the MBE for his role in the successful Ashes squard.
