Jacob Bethell keen to cement No. 3 Test berth despite IPL downtime

Jacob Bethell has said he would “love to stay at No. 3” in England’s Test batting line-up and defended his involvement in the IPL, where he is yet to feature for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) this season.

Bethell, whose performances this winter have made him a first-choice pick across formats, has been linked with a potential move up the order to open the batting if England opt to shuffle their line-up for their Test series against New Zealand in June. He has occasionally opened the batting in white-ball cricket, and shifting up could enable England to pick James Rew in the middle order if, as widely expected, they decide to move on from Zak Crawley.

Speaking on the Sky Cricket podcast, Bethell said that he was open to a move if required and cited the example of Joe Root, whose move up to open in the 2013 Ashes enabled England to pick Jonny Bairstow in the middle order. But he was clear that he would prefer to stay at No. 3, where he scored a brilliant maiden hundred in England’s most recent Test at the SCG in January.

“I’d love to stay at No. 3, if it was up to me. I really like the position,” Bethell said. “I don’t think there’s a massive difference between No. 3 and the top. Someone like Rooty had to start and open the batting and then slid back down to No. 4. If that’s what they want me to do, I’d be more than happy to do it, but I like No. 3 and I’d love to cement that spot as mine if possible.”

Bethell is yet to feature for RCB this season, with Phil Salt, Tim David, Romario Shepherd and Josh Hazlewood their first-choice quartet of overseas players. As a result, his decision to fulfil his INR 2.6 crore (£205,000 approx.) contract has drawn some criticism, with Alastair Cook suggesting he should be playing for Warwickshire in the County Championship instead of “sitting on his arse”.

But Bethell said that he was confident he was doing the right thing by spending the first two months of the English season in India, and said that the intangible benefits of being at the IPL outweighed the opportunity to spend time in the middle against the red ball.

“I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way to do it, right?” he said. “We’ve seen last year, for me personally, that by not playing cricket for a little while, I came into the end of that India [Test] series a bit undercooked, which was a learning for me to take on board.

“But actually, if you look at where I was last year after coming back from the IPL [in which he made two appearances], I was flying going into that West Indies [white-ball] series, and I feel in a similar position now. I feel in a better position now than I was a month ago after the [T20] World Cup, just from getting time around the guys over here and the pure standard of cricket in India and the IPL.

“Every nets session, you’ve got hundreds of eyes on you, be it your coaches or the other players who are also looking at you, going, ‘Is this guy good? Is he not?’ You’ve got the people in the crowd with their phones on. You get exposed to a lot of stuff.

“You might not get the amount of time in the middle as [you would in] the County Championship and playing four rounds of that, but I think in terms of the ability to actually just continue doing what you want to do when there are loads of eyes on you, [being in India] is really important for me personally going forwards.”

Bethell said that he is awaiting a shipment of red Dukes balls which he plans to face in training during the second half of the IPL – which ends four days before England’s first Test against New Zealand at Lord’s on June 4 – and that he has benefitted from playing in occasional practice matches despite not yet being picked by RCB this season.

“My Dukes balls are actually arriving tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got a box coming over from England. I’m planning on ramping up that kind of stuff [up] alongside white-ball training, and I actually think it’s a good thing to do in general… I firmly believe that this [being at the IPL] is the right thing for me to be doing right now.”

Jordan Cox, another England player, is also yet to feature for RCB this season, but Bethell hinted that he is ahead of him in the pecking order: “The beauty of being [the] next batter in line is you get just as much time in the nets as everyone else,” he said. “I’ve been keeping myself busy with trying to get better and ready for when the opportunity might come.”

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