While Nathan Lyon prepares to play his 100th consecutive Test for Australia, England have opted to go to Lord’s without either of the two spinners grabbed in a hurried supermarket sweep after Jack Leach was ruled out of the series. Moeen Ali and Rehan Ahmed must watch from the sidelines when the second Ashes Test begins on Wednesday.
Magical as Moeen is, and exciting as Rehan will be, how did England get into a situation where Leach’s injury left them calling up a white-ball specialist without red-ball overs under his belt, who officially retired from Test cricket in 2021 and who had a sore spinning finger, and then, as cover for him, a young kid who has only played 10 Championship games? There should be a thick, nicely maturing layer of experienced county spinners, tap shoes laced in anticipation of the Ashes, waiting in line between Moeen, 36, and Ahmed, 18. Where have they gone?
The bewildering situation is perhaps best illustrated by looking at the current round of Championship cricket and playing spot the spinner. Division One leaders Surrey have two talented youngsters up their sleeves, Dan Moriarty and Amar Virdi, both 24. They are playing neither, preferring Will Jacks and his impressive all-round skills – as England did on their tour of Pakistan last year. Virdi, who made his Surrey debut at 18, hasn’t played a Championship game since July 2022, when he was sent out on loan to Somerset.
The left-arm spinner Moriarty, who has been picked for just one Championship match this summer, has zipped north on loan to Headingley until the end of July, for potentially four Division Two games. He has been thrown in for the current game against Gloucestershire, with Yorkshire keen to add a left-armer to their attack. All of which has left Dom Bess, 25 and briefly flavour of the month with England, disgruntled.
Bess has now gone on loan to Edgbaston for one game after Warwickshire’s Danny Briggs picked up a hamstring injury. Bess has struggled for red-ball form this season and his game seems to have stagnated since his ill-timed move to Yorkshire. He took two wickets on the first day at Chelmsford, but was merrily tonked by Essex centurions Dan Lawrence and Tom Westley.
The Lancashire leg-spinner Matt Parkinson, 26, he of the social media-friendly ripping leg-breaks, has also plateaued. He is leaving Lancashire at the end of this season to go to Kent, but is currently on loan to Durham, who are playing Leicestershire this week. That side contains his twin brother, slow-left armer Callum, who is leaving Grace Road at the end of the season to go to … Durham.
All of which might give the impression there is a set of young English spinners whose career development has hit a brick wall and are unsure of their role in the game. An impression that is uncannily close to the truth. As for the 33-year-old slow left-armer Liam Dawson, judged surplus to England requirements, he spent the first two days of this round making a century and then taking a very satisfying six wickets against Middlesex.
Andrew Strauss’s men’s high performance review, released last September, looked at how to encourage English spinners. Its number-crunching discovered that spinners bowl just 22% of overs in England – the lowest of any domestic system – compared to 41% internationally. “In domestic cricket it is possible to be successful, especially as a seamer, bowling at slower speeds with less accuracy than is required at Test level. This in turn diminishes the need for spinners,” the report concluded.
Strauss’s review pointed a finger at the Dukes ball and suggested the trial of the Australian Kookaburra in county cricket. These are being put to the test during this current round of matches and again in July, with the hope the Kookaburra will also extend more games into the final day, coaxing spinners into action on a fourth-day wearing pitch.
The report also prescribed a reduction in the number of green seaming pitches, and suggested playing county cricket from May to September. This went alongside a proposed reduction in the number of Championship games, however, and that was not acceptable to the counties. Ultimately, it is the proliferation of white-ball cricket which has pushed red-ball matches into the spin-unfriendly extremities of the season. Throw in the Hundred’s August takeover and there is no real room for manoeuvre. Where spinners are concerned, English cricket has reaped what it has sown.
Simon Harmer’s career with Essex has shown that it is possible to flourish in county cricket as a top-level spinner, but he arrived almost fully formed. In his first season for Essex in 2017, he took 72 wickets at 19.19, and has pocketed over fifty scalps at an average below 25 every year since (with the exception of the Bob Willis Trophy in 2020).
In 2021 Harmer picked out Sussex’s off-spinner Jack Carson as one to watch, “he’s got that X-factor and a lot of potential.” Carson, now 22, finished asleading wicket-taker for Sussex in 2020 and 2021, but missed much of 2022 with a knee injury, winning a Lions call up that winter. Carson has already bowled in five Championship games this summer, but English cricket’s nasty habit of pushing young spinners into the limelight and then discarding them suggests he might be safer keeping his head down and learning his trade with Sussex.
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