- Jacob Bethell will bat at No 3 on his England Test debut against New Zealand
- The 21-year-old made his ODI and T20 debuts just two months ago in September
Jacob Bethell will bat at No 3 on his Test debut in Christchurch on Wednesday night after England were forced to rejig their plans following Jordan Cox’s broken thumb.
The move means Ollie Pope – who will take the gloves for the first time in two years – will drop down three places to No 6, while captain Ben Stokes comes in at No 7.
The 21-year-old Bethell has never batted at No 3 in his 20 first-class games for Warwickshire, which have produced a modest 738 runs at an average of 25. And he has batted at No 4 only twice.
He will also be the first specialist batter to play Test cricket for England without a first-class hundred under his belt since Mike Gatting in 1978.
The news completes a heady couple of days for Bethell, after he was picked up in the IPL auction by Royal Challengers Bangalore for just under £250,000. And it means he will have made his international debut in all three formats in less than three months, after breaking into the white-ball sides against Australia in September.
For Pope, who last kept wicket in a Test at Multan in December 2022, the rejig spares him further scrutiny at No 3, where he has reached 30 only once in his last 12 Test innings.
Stokes, meanwhile, could be liberated by his move to No 7, after struggling for runs on his return to the Test side from injury in Pakistan.
He will be one of four seamers in the side, along with Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse, with Shoaib Bashir the lone frontline spinner on a Hagley Oval surface that looked green 48 hours out from the start of the three-match series.
