Ian Bell: don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got ...

Ian Bell's my favourite English cricketer since David Gower. He's the one I emotionally invested in, felt nervous for, rued his failures and glowed at his successes.

I'm going to write about the nature of individual sporting fandom in general, about Ian Bell in particular, and then make a case for his test recall.

I think my relationship with sport has always been more about individuals than teams. That begins with Gower. Loving Gower taught me early on about the need to make arguments in support of your champion, that there was an army of dolts in the world thinking the wrong things, who needed to know your facts, and if you didn't get to use your facts, you got to hold fast to the truth and nurture your resentment.

In the late 80s and early 90s, lots of people thought that it was perfectly sensible that David Gower wasn't in the England cricket team. I used to argue about it at school with several actual people who held that seemingly incomprehensible opinion. Gower wasn't just the great stylist, wasn't just the most prolific and consistent England batsman of his generation, he was my point of pride.

Then came Ryan Giggs. Bizarrely. My perennial, insistent championing of a footballer at a club I didn't even support, borne of the need to make the case.

Like Gower, Giggs was another left-sider of preternatural gifts, the kind of sportsman I think you had to be a little dead inside not to be thrilled by (in his youthful prime). But, more importantly, when Man Utd were the only team regularly shown on live terrestrial TV in the early 90s, my mum's partner Ed, a dyed-in-the-wool, Best-Law-Charlton United fan, would come round, and we'd sit and watch, and he'd complain about Giggs (Ed did actually like Giggs, he just got a bit frustrated by him and also, of course, enjoyed winding me up) and my mother, a less vociferous Giggsite but a fan nonetheless, and I would make the counter-case.

I used to waste too much time studying the career of Ryan Giggs. Even though I didn't/don't support Man U. People who know me well know that. Ryan Giggs pre-national disgrace. I used to think I might write a book about the subject. Giggs is the story of British football, club and international, in the 90s. The rest is bullshit (oh yeah, apart from Euro96, but even slightly that ...). I had so many arguments in my head about it. I followed games and looked for statistical patterns, developed my argument, found the truths where I needed them about how his form and presence dictated the path of the Premier League season after season.

The army of dolts were saying he had no final ball, didn't score enough goals, should play for Wales more, Cantona was more important, Beckham was more important, Blomqvist was better, Keane was the heartbeat of the side, they'd be better off without him. Some of it was imagined, a lot of it was real. People would phone up 606 and say they didn't need Giggs, they had Luke Chadwick/Quinton Fortune/Kieran Richardson. I saw Brexit coming a mile off.

What's all this got to do with Ian Bell, you're asking? Seriously what? Well, Bell became my cricket Giggs, my pet project. Bell isn't as great, as significant, a cricketer as Giggs is a footballer, but what he certainly is is a major and undersung figure in the glorious era of English cricket 2004-2015.

My championing of Bell is grounded in experience, admiration and that cussed need to make the argument against the dolts. Bell's a wonderful batsman, a joy to watch. Always has been, that's the essence. But also, when I went on a cricket tour in 1993 to the Cotswolds, we played against him. We were 15-18 year olds, as were most of his team mates, he'll have been 11. Tiny. They were very excited about him, he's made a double hundred the previous week. He made 30*, I think, against us. I saw a lot of promising young cricketers back then but didn't forget this this one.

I remember his first test innings against the West Indies in 2004, and the exact feeling I had as he pushed a drive diffidently down the ground for four. "That's too easy. Easier than it should be to score four test runs". Then he was out, a little limply, for 70. Typical Bell, to some eyes.

That's a key point here. Bell represents, and is tied up with, the era of England cricket when a lot of games and series were won easily, and the England fan quickly got used to it. Bell got 100 and England won the game. But Pietersen got a more exciting 100 too and it was only against Sri Lanka. So Bell's worth nothing.

So I'll tell you when I really became an Ian Bell fan, or rather a Bell defender. When I came across the dolts. Sitting in a bar in Barcelona in 2005 watching the 3rd test of the Ashes. I think the 2005 Ashes is where a lot of the wider public got their idea of Bell from, when he was a wide-eyed youngster who failed in that first big series. That was Bell forever for them. They probably weren't paying attention when he bounced straight back by making loads of runs on an otherwise (for the team) torrid tour of Pakistan that came straight afterwards.

Anyway, that 3rd test was the only one he showed form in, but as I sat in that bar in Barcelona, a load of dullard English rugby lads spent a couple of hours of Bell making a very nice half-century (including straight-driving McGrath for six) slagging him off, saying he was shit, saying he shouldn't be in the team. Any visit to the BBC cricket website over the next decade would show these dolts were not a one-off. No more consistent complaint throughout England's glory years than "Bell should be dropped, he's a liability/lightweight/fairweather player". Doesn't the England team miss lightweights like that?

I've just been looking close-up at Bell's test career on statguru, in a way I haven't been able to look close up at Giggs' Man Utd career in retrospect in the way I'd like (not without spending many many hours on it). It doesn't, as such, reveal hidden truths, or that received wisdom about him is entirely wrong.

Several of his 100s, early on, were alongside centuries by other batters. The old complaint. BUT: they are nearly always in matches England won, rather than bore draws. As in, they were innings with meaning, in matches where England were able to pile on the runs to create scoreboard pressure (remember those days!). Having a top-class Number 5 was a massive part of that.

I looked for Man of the Match awards in his test career, and there are only 2, in 118 games, which seems paltry, and as if he was rarely the "main man". But again, that is deceptive. He did not receive Man of the Match awards for any of his three 2013 Ashes hundreds (though he was Man of the Series).

That was his career apex. And vindication for me as a fan. England would, simply, have lost that Ashes without him. The batting was nearly entirely disastrous without him, but each time he pulled the side to decent totals against a top-class Australian attack. No fairweather player then, for a while he was acknowledged as England's key man.

And yet, little more than two years later, it was over. A run of bad form was too prolonged to ignore. He was dropped for a 2016 tour to South Africa and it seemed, and was, the right call. Nick Compton and James Taylor made an immediate impact. With Root and Ballance, Bairstow and Stokes, England seemed to have lots of batting options. Bell was yesterday's player, that was clear to see.

And yet it hasn't turned out that way. Career-ending illness sadly afflicted James Taylor, who seemed his most natural replacement. And no one else has looked capable of replacing Ian Bell at his best (nor, of course, Kevin Pietersen, a different kind of tale entirely).

The stats of it - the player whose place people often wanted taken. 7727 runs at 42.69, a higher average than Gooch, Vaughan, Stewart, Atherton, Hussain, Strauss and Collingwood. (and apart from the precipitous dip at the end, above 45, yet people were still complaining ...). 22 centuries, more than Gooch, Stewart, Gower, Strauss, Thorpe, Vaughan, as many as Cowdrey, Hammond and Boycott. As well as being, until this week, England's highest runscorer in ODIs. I'm not saying he should be seen at the top of the list of England's greats, but he's among them, and above all, he's the kind of player whose presence lifts a team to greatness.

In those prime teams, from 2003 to 2013, England often had several proper test-class batters all at once - Strauss, Vaughan, Trescothick, Cook, Pietersen, Trott, Collingwood, Root - no wonder Bell was sometimes taken for granted.

And then there were ... two or three ... or maybe just one, so inconsistent has Cook been in the last half-decade and so frustratingly close has Bairstow been to really making the breakthrough ...

I reckon that, a few times in the last couple of years, if Bell had hit any kind of form, he might have been reconsidered. But he hasn't. Until now.

He's clearly in superb form, hitting four centuries across different formats in the last month. I'm not the only one muttering about an England recall. A retrograde step? Perhaps.

But he was dropped on form, not attitude, or tactics, or direction, just form, and form has returned. He has not been well replaced. None of the other options provide hope for the future, so, why, in this case, pick for the future? Pick for form and immediate potential for scoring test runs. Maybe, if it all goes swimming, there's another two years in him. Which is as much, realistically, as other options would offer.

Also, he deserves it. He deserves another shot. A model professional, and one of the few of the great England era to be dropped suddenly when still in physical health, rather than retired or excommunicated. It is a feelgood story. The test team could do with one.

For me, Bell defines the great England eras more than any other player - he was there for all the Ashes wins and despite that terrible start, contributed significantly to three of them. He was indicative of the wealth of riches on display, that his 7000-plus test runs at low to mid 40s are deemed so-so. He made it look easy, and people didn't like that. They never do.

He was there for the wins - sometimes he would be dropped (his form was patchy, I can't deny), but the team would flounder, and he'd be brought back. And when he was brought back after being dropped, he would be at his best, and the team would thrive. There's no reason why that shouldn't happen one last time.