Ian Bell's Ashes. It has rather a fine ring to it, as crisp as the summer sunshine that lit up the Riverside as Bell raised his bat in celebration of his third century of the series, and his fourth in five Ashes Tests. Until that point, the quick wind meant the rain clouds came and went, some skirting around the ground, others looming overhead.
The weather has been as precarious as either side's fortunes, and its mutability has meant that the ball, like the match itself, has swung back and forth. It has been balanced, poised en pointe, for three days. Bell, slight as he is, seems an unlikely sort to tip the see-saw, but his weight of runs have done exactly that.
Australia's grip on the game seemed so tight when Jonathan Trott was caught and England again found themselves three wickets down before they had mustered 50 runs between them. But when Bell and Kevin Pietersen came together, that grip slipped and loosened, until they had all but let go of the game. Suddenly Peter Siddle didn't seem quite so relentless, Ryan Harris so sharp, or the pitch so treacherous.
Pietersen and Bell belong together. For England, they are alone together in their good form. Only they and Shane Watson have made batting on this pitch, under these skies, look anything like an easy business. Chris Rogers may have scored more than either, but he worked harder to do it, and gave many more chances as he did so. His was an innings of ceaseless toil and continual turmoil.
Bell and Pietersen are the most prolific partnership England have ever had in their middle-order. They have scored 2,861 runs together at an average of 57. And this was their tenth century stand. Only openers have ever made more. It put them ahead of Pietersen and Paul Collingwood, and Nasser Hussain and Mark Butcher, who scored plenty together in the fag-ends of their careers.
Bell and Pietersen, little and large, make a difficult pair to bowl to. As Bell has said, they both play different shots to the same kinds of delivery. Pietersen looks to turn straight deliveries to the leg-side, which is where he scored 32 of the 44 he made. Bell prefers to send them to the off. "He cuts, I pull. He flicks it, I drive it." Where Pietersen is masterful at the crease, Bell is masterly. Pietersen's strokes make the old pros in the press box splutter. Bell's shots – the cover drives, late cuts, and clipped punches played off the back-foot – make them sigh. The curious thing of it is that for a long time Bell and Pietersen hardly seemed to gel at all. Seven of those ten century stands have come since they put on 116 together at Adelaide in the last Ashes in Australia.
Bell was put in Pietersen's shade in the 2005 Ashes, when he struggled against an attack that Pietersen conquered, though both were new to the scene and the team, and he has stayed there ever since. They knew each other long before that, but it was only at The Oval in 2005, Bell says, that he, along with everyone else, realised just how great a player Pietersen was. It has taken Bell a lot longer to prove himself.
Partly because he was so often making the kind of mistakes that he made when he first met Pietersen in 2000, when they were both playing in Birmingham League cricket. Pietersen, Bell says, still delights in the fact he bowled his current team-mate when he was batting for Cannock, whilst attempting an ill-judged reverse-sweep. Bell has played some similarly injudicious shots for England in his time. There was nothing like that on Sunday.
It seems bizarre now that Bell was criticised so often for only scoring his runs when the match was already won, and that he was damned with statistics which showed he only made centuries in innings when other players did too.
Right now, he is England's most reliable batsman, their bulwark against collapse. It is an unfamiliar sensation for English supporters. But no more so than the sight of Trott rattling along to run-a-ball fifties before getting out gloving a pull, or Alastair Cook throwing loose drives outside his off-stump. The batsmen have been playing out of character.
In Bell's case, it has been for the better. He seems to be a new man, perhaps since he has become a father. He found this kind of form in 2011, when he scored five Test centuries in 12 months, but even then he never had such an air of assurance, of maturity.
Now, when Bell arrives at the crease he takes control of the match. He even outshone Pietersen, who was playing with that excessive sense of caution that always seems so ominous for the opposition. Bell faced more deliveries and made more runs in their partnership. Typically, the spectators would prefer it the other way around. But not necessarily now; when Bell is in this kind of form, the English can't see enough of him. The Australians, though must be sick of the sight of him.
