Primarily a batsman,Bell-Drummond,made his senior cricket debut in 2011. In October 2023 he was appointed as Kent's club captain,replacing Sam Billings who had resigned the role at the end of the 2023 season.[1]
Early life
Bell-Drummond was born in Lewisham in south-east London in 1993.[2] His parents are of Jamaican descent and he has described how watching both West Indian and English cricket home was a major influence on his development.[3][4][5] He was spotted by Kent County Cricket Club playing for Catford Wanderers as a seven-year-old and progressed through the county system,scoring his first century for the under-10 side aged just seven.[4][5] He played for Kent age group teams,scoring centuries at every level,before joining the Cricket Academy at Kent where he was awarded the John Aitken Gary Trophy as the Academy Scholar of the Year in 2010.[4][6] He signed a three-year professional contract with Kent in September 2010 at age 17.[7][8][9]
Bell-Drummond attended Dulwich Prep and won a scholarship to Millfield School[10][11] and played cricket for the school team as well as for England at under-15,under-17 and under-19 levels,captaining the under-17 side against Sri Lanka in 2010.[12] He completed his sixth form studies at the school in 2012 after signing his professional contract with Kent[13][14] and was named the Young Wisden Schools Cricketer of the Year in the 2012 edition of Wisden after scoring over 800 runs for Millfield in 2011.[15]
England youth cricket
Having represented England at under-15 and under-17 levels,Bell-Drummond played for the England under-19 cricket team against Sri Lanka in 2010.[16] He made his youth Test debut on 21 July 2010 at the County Ground,Northampton before scoring unbeaten 88 in the second youth Test later in the same month,aged only 16.[17][7] He played in both under-19 Test matches and in four youth one-day international matches during England's return tour of Sri Lanka in January and February 2011.[18][19]
In July 2011 Bell-Drummond played in a one-day series against South Africa under-19s. He top-scored for England in three of the seven matches in the series and was the leading run scorer for the team in the series,scoring 329 runs in seven innings at an average of 47.00.[20][21][22][23]
After touring Bangladesh with the England under-19 side during January and February 2012 and again leading the team in run scoring,playing in all seven youth ODIs,[24][25][26] Bell-Drummond played in a four-way 50-over competition against the Australia,India and New Zealand under-19s in North Queensland in April 2012.[27] He was the leading run-scorer in the competition with 287 runs at an average of 95.66,[28] including a match-winning 103 not out against Australia in an innings when the next highest score for the England team was 28.[29] Later the same month he was described as "perhaps the most exciting young batsman in the country"[30] and was named in the England team for the 2012 Under-19 World Cup,held in Queensland in August 2012.[31] By his standards he had a disappointing tournament after being tipped as "one of the batsmen to watch".[32]
He made his maiden first-class century in April 2013 against a Cardiff University side and used the innings to become a regular in the Kent side during the 2013 season.[34][35] After cementing his place in the Kent side in all forms of cricket and scoring a century against the touring Australian side in June 2015,Bell-Drummond was awarded his county cap in August 2015.[35][36][37][38] In August 2015 he deputised as an emergency wicket-keeper in Kent's County Championship match at Derby when Sam Billings suffered a finger injury,keeping wicket until Ryan Davies arrived from Second XI duty to act as a substitute.[39] He deputised again in May 2017 when Adam Rouse injured a thumb,taking one catch behind the stumps.[40]
In December 2015 Bell-Drummond made his first appearance for England Lions against the United Arab Emirates in a T20 match in Dubai. He scored 5 runs from 5 deliveries opening the batting. Later the same month he played in the final game of the five match T20 series against Pakistan A scoring 17 runs.[41]
Bell-Drummond made an excellent start to the 2016 domestic season,hitting his maiden first-class double-hundred against Loughborough MCCU followed by a century in his first innings of the County Championship season against Leicestershire.[35][42] He and Tom Latham then combined for two first-wicket century partnerships in Kent's opening home match of the Championship against Glamorgan,only the third time this had been achieved in the same championship match in the county's history.[43][44] Bell-Drummond was selected for England Lions again during the 2016 summer,playing limited overs matches against both Pakistan A and Sri Lanka A. He scored his highest List A cricket score of 171 not out against Sri Lanka A at Canterbury during the series of matches as he combined with Ben Duckett to post the second highest List A partnership on record.[45][46]
During the 2016–17 English off-season Bell-Drummond was again selected for the Lions,playing against the UAE in Dubai during December and in the List A matches against Sri Lanka A in March,scoring a century in the 4th match of the series.[47] He was also chosen to play in the North v South pre-season series in the United Arab Emirates.[48]
The 2019 season saw Bell-Drummond lead Kent's batting,scoring a club best 987 runs in first-class cricket. He broke his run of seasons without a first-class hundred,scoring a century against Warwickshire,registering his highest County Championship score of 166 runs.[57] He scored six half-centuries in first-class cricket,was Kent's leading T20 run scorer and scored a century in the Royal London Cup competition,averaging more than 60 runs per innings in four matches in the competition.[58] The shortened 2020 season saw Bell-Drummond once again as Kent's leading T20 run scorer,although he failed to score a first-class half-century,playing in all of Kent's five matches and captaining the side in the absence of both club captain Sam Billings and Joe Denly,both of whom were on England duty. During the 2020/21 off-season he played for Colombo Kings in the inaugural season of the Lanka Premier League.
During 2017 Bell-Drummond set up Platform,a cricket project aiming to increase participation in the sport by young people based in the London Borough of Lewisham,the area in which he grew up. The project involves reintroducing the sport into local primary schools and includes after-school and winter coaching. It ran a cricket festival for school children at Deptford during 2018 and was initially funded by Bell-Drummond and a business partner.[3][10][63][64] Lewisham is a relatively low-income London borough with a significant Afro-Caribbean population and the initiative was partly influences by a decline in participation in cricket in the Afro-Caribbean population.[65] In 2018 it was revealed that Bell-Drummond was one of only eight black or mixed-race cricketers playing in the County Championship,with only three,including Bell-Drummond,aged 25 or under.[10][3] A 2020 study revealed that Bell-Drummond was one of only nine black players who featured in the County Championship during the 2019 season,down from a figure of 33 in 1995.[66]
He has scored seven List A centuries,with a highest score of 171 not out made for England Lions in 2016,[69] and two Twenty20 centuries,scores of 112 not out against Surrey at Tunbridge Wells in 2016 and of 111 against Middlesex at Canterbury in 2023.[70][71] In 2017 he and Joe Denly set Kent's record partnership for any wicket in T20 cricket,adding 207 runs for the first wicket against Essex at Chelmsford. At the time this was a world record opening partnership in Twenty20 cricket,and the third highest in the world for any wicket in the format.[72] Earlier in the same season he and Denly had scored 163 runs against Surrey for the first-wicket at The Oval,setting the previous highest partnership for any wicket for Kent.[73][74]
Despite having bowled regularly whilst playing age-group cricket,Bell-Drummond began his career bowling infrequently in senior cricket,citing a number of injury concerns as the main reason for not doing so.[75] He took his first professional wicket in 2018 and began to bowl rather more frequently during the start of the 2019 season,taking five wickets during Kent's 2019 Royal London One-Day Cup campaign with his "slippery right-arm seamers" and contributing wickets in the County Championship.[75][76] His best first-class bowling figures of three wickets for 47 runs were taken against Middlesex at the end of the 2021 season. He took took 2/22 against Surrey during the 2019 season's One-Day Cup,his best List A bowling figures,[76][77] and 2/19 against Somerset in the 2019 t20 Blast,his first T20 wickets.[78]
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↑ Wilde S (2013) Wisden Cricketers of the Year: A Celebration of Cricket's Greatest Players, p.369, A & C Black. (Available online, retrieved 2016-12-03).
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