Ian Bell.
I think he was the pro forma for believing I was smarter than the selectors. The man who really made me come of age as an armchair fan. It seemed like for a long time he was selected almost entirely on the strength of how good Ian Bell should be at some point, provided they kept selecting him. During a time when people genuinely debated the merits of Geraint Jones batting in the top six for England it was hard to believe that there was a batsman in England genuinely as good as Ian Bell should be, so along with a host of injuries to the older players, around he stuck. I disliked him for this, I thought he'd bluffed his way into the team. But I also saw some of the good stuff, and not just shots but real series of outright dominance - like how untouchable he seemed against Pakistan in 2006 - and I remained a flip-flopper.
There was also his ongoing battle with Paul Collingwood, which seemed to be about who could test the patience of England fans more in entirely different ways. The pair of them seemed to split the supporters into idealogical camps. But while Collingwood remained in a consistent position, playing a consistent level of shockingly awful between valuable hundreds, Bell yo-yoed up and down the order and through immensely purple but brief patches of form. Ian Bell attracted opinion like a pubescent-looking wiry magnet.
It was around 2009 that I was so sick of thinking about it and changing my mind over how he might or might not help that I joined KC's campaign to Not Have Opinions About Ian Bell, and became its envoy on the now dead 606 forums. Bell was dropped from the Test team, I understood. He was recalled to the test team, I was entirely indifferent. He played an innings in the 5th Ashes Test that most people described as "entirely okay" and everything seemed fair.
My hard-fought effort to purge myself of opinion was not allowed to last, as Bell eroded all my doing by going and playing incredibly ****ing well, the ****. In 2010 he rescued a Test in South Africa and salvaged a series in the most mature and important innings of his life, before going on to play a succession of beautiful innings in Australia. The following year he showed adaptability, fluiity and consistency and averaged around 100 in Tests, while remaining a cut above every time he went to play for Warwickshire, including a successful stint as captain. I was sold. This was the second coming of a watery-eyed Christ.
And soon after that came the Dark Times. Bell was ripped a new one in the UAE and it destroyed him. I had to ask myself why I kept defending him when he reacted to even conventional spin as though the sound of bat on ball might kill him. He looked at sea against South Africa and when I still advocated his passage to India, I found myself having to frame it as there simply being no one better. But I doubted. It was hard not to notice his success or lack thereof being entirely consistent with that of the side, and the coat-tail rider idea was back, and it festered. We were back in 2006 again. His only decent knock of the year was on a dead track at Nagpur almost entirely after the other 21 players had stopped trying.
Then came 2013, and he came back to me even though I thrice doubted him, and I swear not to do so again.
