Ian Bell has urged England to back up their Ageas Bowl heroics with another masterful performance in the fourth Investec Test against India.
Alastair Cook’s men ended a run of 10 winless games in the longest format with a dominant 266-run win at Southampton to level the series at 1-1 with two to play.
But Bell, who scored an exquisite 167 as England piled on first-innings runs on the south coast, is keen to remind his team-mates that their recent success came on the back of a chastening loss.
England’s recovery from a dispiriting 95-run reverse at Lord’s in the second Test underlines how quickly fortunes can alter at the highest level - something Bell has seen countless times before across 257 international appearances.
The 32-year-old knows England must be absolutely on their mettle when the next eagerly awaited instalment of an absorbing series gets under way at Emirates Old Trafford on Thursday.
“After Lord’s, when we lost that game, you go to a new game (and) you have to start all over again,” Bell said. “You’ve got to do all that hard work again.
“We know what’s ahead of us; we know India are a quality side. Whatever we do on Thursday we have to do it well, but we need five good days to back up a good performance at Southampton. We’re all excited about that challenge.
“It’s been a difficult 12 months, everybody know that. There’s been a lot of hard work behind the scenes, so it was good to put a whole Test match together exactly how we’d want it.
“It’d be nice to start again here at Old Trafford in exactly the same way. We’ll work hard, we’ll talk about the game in the meeting, hopefully have two good days of preparation and hit the ground running on day one.”
Bell insists confidence has been at a good level in the England dressing room throughout the summer - impressive contributions from new faces such as Gary Ballance, Moeen Ali and Jos Buttler undoubtedly encouraging a feel-good factor.
But the Warwickshire batsman knows the best way to harness a positive mood is through results such as the one achieved last time out.
“Behind the scenes we still have the confidence even though the results haven’t been going our way," he said. "We knew that all we needed to do was put a whole game together.
“Through the other Test matches this summer we’ve had parts that have been good and parts that haven’t been so good.
“The confidence we can gain from Southampton - the fact that we put five days of really good cricket together. That’s exactly what we need to do here in Manchester.”
Recalls for Chris Woakes and Chris Jordan at the Ageas Bowl, a duo who will again battle for a place in a seam department bolstered by the returning Steven Finn, offered an encouraging demonstration of England’s strength in depth.
Bell sees this as evidence of a county game in rude health, a view backed up by the likes of Ballance and Moeen taking to the highest level in untroubled fashion.
“There’s some great stuff going on domestically. The standard of cricket has been really high this year,” Bell added, having scored two centuries and a pair of fifties in four LV= County Championship appearances earlier this season.
“It’s good; that’s where we need it to be - we need lots of competition for places.
“We’ve got quality bowlers backing that up, keeping pressure on the senior guys. But also, if someone goes down with an injury, we’ve got good players to come and step up.”