Taunton: Warwickshire 189-3 (IR Bell 84no, J O Troughton 58no) v Somerset

Yesterday’s fragments of play at Taunton will almost certainly not merit a mention when the Ashes series of 2009 comes to be written up into history.

But, who knows? Perhaps the slivers of cricket that were slipped in amongst the drizzle and murky light when Somerset and Warwickshire launched their seasons were significant.

Ian Bell starts this season on the outside looking in to the England team. That a player of his quality is in that position is baffling though, at the same time, after his run of modest scores, also quite understandable.

But his colossal talent remains there to be tapped. And on a truncated day’s play in Taunton, Bell showed every nuance of that talent. In difficult conditions, he batted with a rare ease. With comfort, technical excellence and style.

Last time Bell batted for Warwickshire, last July, he faced West Country opposition – Gloucestershire at Edgbaston – and scored 215. There was barely a false shot then and he played in a similar vein yesterday to finish the day unbeaten on 84 (160 balls, 13 fours).

Jim Troughton played with scarely less assurance for 58 (113 balls, eight fours) in an unbroken partnership of 123 which lifted the Bears away from the uneasy foundation of 66 for three to 189 for three by the close.

Put in, the batsmen struggled early on as the ball swung around. Warwickshire’s first wicket was, remarkably, their second least productive of all ten in the championship last season and there was no upturn yesterday. Just 12 was on the board when Tony Frost feathered a lifted from Ben Phillips to wicket-keeper Craig Kieswetter.

Darren Maddy knuckled down for 17 from 43 balls but then Phillips switched to the River End with immediate effect. His second ball kept a fraction low to bowl Maddy – and open the way for Jonathan Trott’s first innings of the summer. It lasted one ball.

Ah, the joy of cricket. All winter, through the cold weeks and months, you train and practise and adjust this bit of your game and hone that one and then go to New Zealand for some match practice – and then the season starts and you offer no stroke to a straight one.

Trott was duly adjudged lbw to a ball that would have hit the top of middle. In his defence, Phillips had set himself up for an outswinger and expected to bowl one only to be as surprised as anyone else when the ball arrowed in.

Warwickshire were wobbling but Bell and Troughton concentrated hard to pull the innings round. Charl Willoughby nipped a couple past Bell’s outside-edge but virtually everything else came resoundingly off the middle of the bat.

He reached 50 from 84 balls with his ninth four, spanked through the covers off Mark Turner and, from one Turner over, pinged each of the six balls, sweet as a nut, in a different direction. That his scoring slowed later suggested only that he has a major innings in mind here.