It would be easy to underestimate Ian Bell. The least demonstrative of England’s Ashes winners dresses for anonymity. He is rarely seen without a sports cap pulled down over his eyes. He does that sportsman’s thing of arriving for his interview while fiddling with his mobile phone, which is seemingly half shyness, half reluctance to bare his soul. And if he knows how to smile, he must have shared a teacher with Duncan Fletcher, the famously taciturn England coach. One can only imagine his discomfort waving to the masses during the open-top bus ride around London to celebrate the Ashes win last year.

Two days after Bell and I speak in the lounge of the England team hotel in Jaipur, Kevin Pietersen sat in the same area and hollered to two guests to talk more quietly as he was trying to give a press conference. Bell would rather die than do such a thing.

But beware the quiet man. Over the past few months, Bell has left the chrysalis and started to spread the most handsome butterfly wings. After not even making England’s starting XI against Sri Lanka for the first three Tests last summer, he scored three immaculate hundreds in three Tests against Pakistan. And his innings against Australia in the Champions Trophy eight days ago confirmed a more assertive approach.

Bell still barely looks old enough to cross a road unsupervised, let alone the boundary rope of an international arena, but he has, at 24, assumed a stature worthy of the predictions made for him by many good judges while he was still in his teens. Don’t bet against him being England’s leading run scorer in the Ashes this winter.

LAST year’s instalment was traumatic for him, even in victory. He averaged 17 and failed to reach double figures in seven of his 10 innings, including a pair in the final, decisive match at The Oval. He describes himself then as an inexperienced pup “thrown” into a big series.

If Bell looked lost during his first Test against Australia at Lord’s, we now know why, because he says that even while he was batting he was asking himself what he was doing on such a big stage.

“I’d only played three Tests, two against Bangladesh,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what proper Test cricket was about. Although personally it wasn’t a successful series, the Ashes showed me where I needed to get to and how much work needed to be done.

“I’d never even faced Shane Warne before, or Glenn McGrath. I’d never faced Brett Lee. I was learning on my feet. Hopefully what I’ve learnt from that series will stand me in good stead.

“I’ve played 18 Tests now and changed massively in 12 months. I’m definitely a different cricketer in terms of how I approach my game. I believe now I’m good enough to be at this level, which possibly wasn’t the case in that last series. Playing against the best side in the world, looking around . . . ‘Should I be here?’ “Now, I don’t think that’s in the back of my mind. I’ve had success at this level and believe I’m good enough to give it a real go in Australia. I’ll be going there on the back of a very good series. I’m ready and confident.”

Last year, spotting his discomfort, the Australian close fielders gave him a hard time, adding their questioning voices to his own about his right to be taking part. They started off joking about him being an easy wicket and it is not hard to imagine the lengths to which they disparaged Bell as his failures stacked up, though a pair of fifties in the third Test at Old Trafford won him a brief respite.

It wasn’t just his opponents who intimidated him though, but his own teammates, too.

“When I got thrown into the Ashes series,” he says. “I looked around our dressing-room and saw a lot of good players, players I’d watched and admired. You want to show everyone how good you are. I put too much pressure on myself trying to impress the guys I was in the dressing-room with, to show that I was good enough to be there and was the same as everyone else.”

Similar emotions must have coursed through Pietersen, who was playing his first Test series, but he probably just looked at Andrew Flintoff, Michael Vaughan and Steve Harmison and resolved to be a bigger star than any of them. As people, Bell and Pietersen are polar opposites but they share the common trait of being exceptional young batsmen. All being well, they should be pillars of English cricket for the next seven or eight years.