Jacob Bethell says he ignores the outside noise that has followed his swift rise with England.
Bethell appears to be the poster boy of England’s limited-overs reset and has delivered a few promising moments in his dozen matches since being drafted in at the back end of the summer against Australia.
Tipped to be a “superstar” by Test captain Ben Stokes and interim white-ball head coach Marcus Trescothick, Bethell thumped 20 in an over off vaunted Australia leg-spinner Adam Zampa and has made a couple of fifties in the Caribbean which have contributed to England wins.
But the 21-year-old insisted all the external hype surrounding his potential falls on deaf ears.
“If I’m honest, I don’t really look at anything,” he said. “I don’t look at the good, the bad or anything. I’ve got pretty good confidence in myself with what I can do.
“Unless it’s my parents or really good friends, I don’t really listen to what anyone else says.
“When my friends from school sometimes get it wrong and send me stuff people are saying, I’m like ‘please don’t’. I don’t look at it for a reason.
“When people say good things about you, it’s always nice but I know that as much as there’s good, there’s bad.”
Bethell hopes England can wrap up a T20 series victory over the West Indies “sooner rather than later”, with the tourists looking to move into an unassailable 3-0 lead in St Lucia on Thursday.
Attention will then move on to England’s Test tour of New Zealand, with Bethell getting the nod despite a modest first-class record in which he has a high score of 93 and five fifties in 20 matches.
Bethell expects the three-match visit will be a “learning experience” and the uncapped batting all-rounder hopes he can gain valuable insights from the likes of Stokes, Joe Root and Harry Brook.
“I’ve always wanted to play Test cricket, so to to get the call-up for the squad was unbelievable,” he said. “I’m not sure what kind of playing opportunities are going to be there. I’ve not been told much.
“Just being around the guys and learning off them will be really good and if there is an opportunity to play at some point, I’ll be looking to take it with both hands.”
While Bethell was born in Barbados and raised there before leaving for a cricket scholarship in the UK aged 12, his family still live on the island and turned out in force for Saturday’s first T20 at the Kensington Oval.
Bethell estimates there were around 150 people packed into the Greenidge and Haynes Stand cheering him on as he registered an unbeaten 58, putting on an unbroken 107 with Phil Salt that sealed victory.
“It was cool when I was batting, fielding, anything really,” he said. “I could hear everyone chatting and stuff. But for the stars to align and actually play a pretty big part in that game was special.”
Given his background, Bethell might have anticipated some opprobrium from the Windies players in a series where all five matches – three ODIs and two T20s – have been won by the team calling correctly at the toss.
“There has been absolutely nothing,” he said. “In the T20s, it was quite loud so I don’t know if I couldn’t hear them or what but in the 50 overs, there was definitely nothing.
“When I played against West Indies Under-19s (for England) a few years back, there was definitely a lot more then but that was more so because it was the guys that I’d played Under-13s cricket with growing up. They knew me a bit better than the guys in the West Indies team now know me.”
England could name an unchanged XI at the ground which is named after the West Indies head coach Daren Sammy in Gros Islet.