Jacob Bethell’s assured Test debut last week, despite his tender age and no first-class century to his name, has given the impression that England have another special player on their hands.

Scyld Berry recalls the moments when he knew England batsmen would go on to become all-time greats.

Sir Geoffrey Boycott

His maiden first-class century was in the Roses Match of 1963. In itself that marked him out as an England prospect: to score 145, after Yorkshire had been 56 for three, against a Lancashire seam attack of Brian Statham, Peter Lever and Ken Higgs was special.

He was already into his eighties by the time I had scurried down to Bramall Lane after school, and middling his cover-drives in the direction of the stand where I was sitting on the terraces (tuppence for a cushion which you could throw on the field if the umpires called off play for bad light or Yorkshire started losing, which they seldom did).

Boycott was soon promoted to open by Brian Close – either that or he did not get into Yorkshire’s team – and was opening for England the following year in the Ashes. You can still see him in that series on YouTube, wearing spectacles, combing his hair back into place with his right glove after almost every ball, and rising on to the back foot to force through the covers, and finishing with his first Test hundred. It did not take much, even for a nine-year-old, to realise that he would go on to score many more.

David Gower

He was like a lad who had downed his first pint of shandy in one. The Pakistan bowler was a modest left-arm medium-pacer, Liaqat Ali, and he had bowled a long-hop, but it still had to be hooked for four, which Gower did. It was his first ball in Test cricket, and a baptism not of fire but of fireworks which were to light up English cricket for more than a decade.

Gower was a Bazball-type selection in that old sweats thought the 21-year-old had not begun to fulfil his apprenticeship: he could play dazzling strokes but could not build an innings. In championship cricket he was averaging early twenties for Leicestershire.

But once he had been selected for England he quickly learnt how to build: a 50 on this debut was followed with a double-hundred against India on the same ground of Edgbaston the following year. He said earlier this winter on commentary he had played one reverse-sweep. Would he have played more novel strokes if he were starting now, or been content with the abundance in his repertoire?

Kevin Pietersen

His batting had impressed on his one-day international debut in Zimbabwe, and he felt the omission deeply when England went on to a Test series in South Africa without him, when he so wanted to be wanted. But what set him apart as a stroke player of unprecedented virtuosity was his first innings against Australia, an unbeaten 91 off only 65 balls in a one-day international in Bristol, in a tri-series ahead of the 2005 Ashes.

Australia were vulnerable at last: they had dropped Andrew Symonds for drinking and there was a suspicion that a couple of their seamers were nearing their end. Pietersen, on a hot day, waded into the age-old rivalry and took apart Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz. He carried that aggression into the Test series, and once those two pace bowlers had been forced out of the Ashes, Australia had to rely on the raw rookie Shaun Tait for the final two Tests. What Pietersen did in the fifth Test, at the Oval, to Tait and the rest of their attack, is history. So were Australia after holding the Ashes for 16 years.

Joe Root

He bounced out, eager for his initiation, while all around him England batsmen had frozen with tension. Late in 2012 England had gone into the final Test against India 2-1 up, and were desperate to win a series there for the first time since 1984-85 – so desperate they were almost paralysed.

Alastair Cook, captain, scored just a single off the 28 balls he faced; Ian Bell likewise. England were sinking when the 21-year-old Root bounced out and cheekily said to the somewhat more senior Pietersen: “Ayup, lad, what’s going on?”

Root proceeded to score 10 runs off his first nine balls, which made a fine start to raising the siege. He moved fluently towards the ball from the outset, converting it into a half-volley. Blood flowed through England’s veins again.

Root went on to score 73, as did Pietersen, and Graeme Swann blithely swotted a fifty, but it was the cabin boy who had led the fleet into battle. Root, who had already marked himself out as a lad keen for a contest by opening the bowling in T20 games for Yorkshire, had batted impressively in the nets the previous day, so Cook and Andy Flower picked him instead of Samit Patel or Jonny Bairstow. Latest reports are that Root is still going strong.

Ben Stokes

After Jonathan Trott flew home from Brisbane in 2013-14, England had a practice game in Alice Springs. The opposition was decent enough, not the bunch of 10-year olds that Cricket Australia has since delighted in sending out to bat against England touring teams. The question was: who should replace Trott in the side for the second Test at Adelaide and the rest of that Ashes series?

Gary Ballance was the next specialist batsman in line, and made a 50 in Alice Springs. I dined that evening with Flower, England’s head coach, and ventured to suggest that another left-hander, though an all-rounder, had more precise footwork than Ballance, and was also ahead of the reserve wicketkeeper, Jonny Bairstow. Flower thought so too, and therefore it was Ben Stokes making his Test debut in place of Trott against Mitchell Johnson at his fieriest.

He survived, and in the next Test he scored 120, England’s sole century in that series, against one of the finest attacks ever. From the start Stokes had the all-round game – and he probably still does have it if he wants to use it next winter, back in Australia, at No 3.

Jacob Bethell

Presence and composure: from the moment he played his second championship match, if not before, it was apparent that a 19-year-old left-hander from Barbados was mature beyond his years in having the capacity to make the most of himself.

His championship debut had been for Warwickshire in 2021, but, well-staffed as a Test-match ground county, they could not fit him in so he went to Gloucestershire on loan for a game against Somerset in 2022 – and looked more at ease than most of his new team-mates, as though he lived on a cricket field. Going in at 88 for four he played the longest innings (37 in 102 balls), and, in the next innings, going in at 50 for four, he played both the longest and highest innings, 61 off 98 balls, against a strong attack featuring Jack Leach.

Already Bethell had all the gears, which he demonstrated on his Test debut, making a valuable 10, then smashing Nathan Smith for four fours in his first over in England’s run-chase. Bear in mind that he says he always batted in the top three before county cricket – and his left-arm spinners when his fingers get to work on the ball. He is a batsman, of vast potential, who bowls.