England's ‘lack of faith’ in Bess has nothing to do with his implosion - it was always coming

A day when everything that could possibly go wrong ends up going wrong. A day when existence feels like a burden. A day when the inner you keeps yelling that you’re not good enough. A day when you feel like you let everyone you know down. 

The fallout of Bess’ annihilation in Ahmedabad has been bad. As is always the case almost all the time, in this social media era we live in, people have latched on to the 23-year-old. Heavy criticism has been directed towards the off-spinner and many experts, too, have held him solely responsible for handing India the Test on a platter. And it is understandable. Bess came to bowl at a time when none of the English bowlers essentially could do no wrong but, flabbergastingly, found it impossible to bowl two decent deliveries in a row. Having picked only 3 specialist bowlers, England needed Bess to be at his very best, but by his 6th over it was evident that, at least on current form, it was Root who was the visitors’ most reliable spinner. And yes, this without a tinge of irony. 

Murali Karthik and L Sivaramakrishnan, on air on Day 2, spent almost an entire hour trying to decode the Bess mystery. “How could a bowler who looked like a million bucks the very first time he bowled in the tour, suddenly turn into someone who would struggle to get a gig even at the club level?” they wondered. They were never able to figure out why. It, to this very moment, remains a question that is bugging everyone who has seen Bess' fall from grace. 

The most common theory that is floating around, at least in the English media, is that Bess has been hard-done-by by the English management. His axing from the second Test, the subsequent controversy surrounding the availability of Moeen Ali and the lack of trust and faith the management showed in Bess by omitting him from the pink-ball Test has convinced several people that Bess perhaps might have succeeded had the ECB, the management and his captain Joe Root shown more faith in him. That England threw Bess under the bus and that the youngster is a victim of severe mismanagement. 

In lead up to the India Tests, Bess took 12 wickets in 2 Tests versus Sri Lanka. He struck once every 42.5 balls - the best among all spinners in the series - he picked a five-wicket haul and he finished with an average of 21.25 which was, again, by some distance the best tally for any spinner in that series. For those who did not watch the off-spinner bowl in the series - and you suspect a vast majority of those pinning the blame on the ECB for Bess’ implosion might not have watched Bess bowl versus Sri Lanka - these looked like figures that were godly. 

Yet these were numbers that were flattering. Frankly put, Bess was by some distance the worst spinner in that series. As CricViz’s ‘expected wicket’ model suggested, the balls Bess bowled were expected to give him seven wickets at 35.9. In reality, however, he ended up scalping 12 at 21.25. His 5/30 in the first innings of the first Test was, in fact, the worst five-wicket haul - in terms of expected wickets (0.55) - statistically, in Test history. This basically indicates that while he bowled ‘alright’, his figures were made to look way better than they actually should have been owing to a cocktail of poor batting and a big slice of luck.

Rahane got out to a full toss - Joe Root took a wrong-handed blinder - while Pujara pulled a half-tracker straight into the body of the forward short-leg fielder, which ricocheted and ballooned into the hands of the fielder at short mid-wicket. These two dismissals added two more wickets to Bess’ tally, but it was hardly his brilliance which triggered them. Post Pujara’s dismissal in the first innings, he ended up leaking 87 off 18 overs at an ER of 4.83. The full-tosses, half-trackers, and half-volleys made frequent appearances in the second innings, where he was taken apart for 50 runs off just 8 overs.

So his omission from the second and third Tests, and the drama surrounding Moeen, had nothing to do with Bess’ horror show on Day 2 - by late Day 3 of the first Test it was evident that he’d lost his rhythm.

This was not something new for England and Root, though. In the first innings of the second Test in Galle, an atrocious showing from Bess forced the England skipper to overbowl his talisman pacer, Anderson, in conditions that were flaccid. Bess gave his skipper no control whatsoever and hence, as a result, a 38-year-old Anderson ended up bowling 3 more overs than the 23-year-old on the first day of a flat sub-continent wicket. An absence of quality and ruthlessness in Sri Lanka’s batting meant that England got away on that occasion, but India made sure that they made the Three Lions pay. 

Ultimately, though, that Bess is struggling should not come as a surprise. He could barely get a gig in the first XI for his county side, Somerset, when he was thrust into the side out of the blue against South Africa last year and it was only because of his unexpected fine showing there - 8 wickets in 2 games @ 25.75, including a five-fer - that England decided to stick by him and invest in him. His disappointing home season in 2020 - 8 wickets in 8 innings @ 55.50 - was masked by the excellence of Woakes, Broad, and Anderson, but, as England have learnt now, you could only hide a glaring flaw for so long. 

What’s assured though is that these experiences - though scarring - will ultimately mould Bess into a stronger character and a better bowler. With both bat and ball in hand, Bess has shown that he is someone who can ‘make things happen’, and if history is anything to go by, then a player like Bess - an x-factor; a difference maker on his day - will certainly make a roaring comeback in the near future.