During his great Warwickshire career, Ian Bell played 470 innings for the Bears across the formats. Here he picks out five of his favourites.
Members and supporters can pick their favourite Bell performance from the list below via the Edgbaston app, which is free to download on iOS and Android.
103 v Nottinghamshire at Edgbaston in 2001
This is special to me as it was my first hundred in the championship. I was 19 and just feeling my way into first-team cricket. I had scored my maiden first class hundred earlier in the season at Oxford in a big partnership with Michael Powell so it was nice to build on that with a championship hundred.
It was against a good Nottinghamshire attack and I put on a partnership with Dougie Brown who also scored a hundred and we went on to win the match.
To score a championship century was a big step forward for me. I ended up scoring two or three centuries that year and finished with one at Derby in a match in which we secured promotion so I felt I was really starting to contribute for the Bears.
262 not out v Sussex at Horsham in 2004
This was my highest ever first class score and will always be a special one for me. I had been to Australia the previous winter and worked on a few things and look back on the 2004 season as a bit of a breakthrough season for me.
It was very pleasing to bat that that length of time against an attack which included Mushtaq Ahmed, one of the best overseas players we have seen in the county game and who was getting 100 wickets a year.
It was an excellent pitch to bat on, but to have the concentration to bat that length of time was very pleasing. It was very different to the disciplines of a one-day innings.
129 and 4-1-4-4 v Middlesex at Lord’s in 2004
It was always amazing just to play at Lord’s so to score runs there was fantastic and this was my first century there. Nick Knight got a triple hundred and it was a game which we won to move to the top of the championship table. That made the innings even more special because the individual stuff is great but it was always all about the games you win and the trophies you win and the series you win.
This century came in a bit of a purple patch for me which earned me my Test debut later in the summer. It was a weird game because the sun came out for a day and a half when we batted and then, when we bowled, it went overcast and the ball swung around. The pitch was good but the ball started to swing which is what I always tried do, back when I was bowling a long time ago! It was a memorable game.
107 v Somerset, Lords, 2010
This is the one I definitely see as my best innings for the Bears. I grew up in an era when Warwickshire always seemed to be in Lord’s finals, so for me to deliver for the Bears in a final was very special. To captain the side and score a match-winning hundred was the ultimate dream. It was always what I had wanted to achieve as a kid.
It was under lights and not an absolutely flat pitch. Our bowlers did incredibly well to restrict Somerset, I remember Imran Tahir switching ends and getting an incredible five-for, and then for me to play the way I did under pressure, possibly the best I ever played for Warwickshire, was very satisfying.
120 v Durham, Edgbaston, 2012
It was always very rewarding to score runs in tough batting conditions and this is one that I am proud of. It was a low-scoring game as Keith Barker and Chris Wright took nine wickets in Durham’s first innings and then Barks and Jeetan Patel took eight in the second.
It was the sort of pitch on which 50 was a good score, so to get 100 was important in a very shortened game. Durham were a very strong side at the time and had won the championship several times recently and had a strong attack led by Graham Onions, so to score a hundred against them in favourable bowling conditions is right up there for me.
