Ben Stokes says England newbie Jacob Bethell has ‘proved why we rate him so highly’ | Cricket News

The England Test rebuild under captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum has raised many questions, both at home and abroad, with the leadership team’s insence on blooding in youngsters and moving on older mainstays like James Anderson and Jonny Bairstow.
Among the many decisions had been the choice to move Ollie Pope down the order and bring in the relatively untested Jacob Bethell into the no. 3 position.
Eyebrows were raised when the 21-year-old batter, who had never played a first-class match above number four, was slotted straight into England’s team as the no. 3 batter.
With a half-century in the first Test against New Zealand in Wellington, and a knock of 96 in the team’s mammoth 323-run win in Wellington that clinched the series, Bethell repaid the faith.
Stokes said that it proved why him and McCullum were keen to bring him in so early. “I know there was a bit made of Beth batting at three with his inexperience and the lack of first class cricket batting at the top of the order,” he was quoted as saying Reuters.
“But you know, me and (coach Brendon McCullum) don’t think like that. You have a young lad with so much potential and so much talent, why not let him go out there and expose himself to test cricket at its toughest? If he hadn’t batted in the top three, he wouldn’t have slapped 50 odd (in Chrchurch), which I’ve got no doubt led him into this game with the confidence to go out there and play the way that he did in our second innings.”
I was devastated for him to not get that three figures,” Stokes added. “I walked in and I said to him, ‘it’s only four runs, isn’t it?’ And his response was, ‘yeah, but it would have been flare if I’d smacked that through the covers to bring it up’… He’s proved a lot to a lot of people and proved why we rate him so highly.”