Moeen Ali
Moeen is a vastly experienced veteran of 64 Tests – of all English spinners only Derek Underwood and Graeme Swann have taken more than his 195 wickets – and an excellent batter, but he retired from Test cricket in September 2021 and has not played a first-class game since, explaining that towards the end of his Test career he “found it a struggle to get in the zone” to deal with the format’s unique challenges.
Adil Rashid
Rashid has not played a first-class game since January 2019, when he made his 19th Test appearance in Barbados, since when he has won two white-ball World Cups. But he spoke to Brendon McCullum last year about the possibility of a return and was encouraged. “I’ve not closed the door on Test cricket. I’ve not retired, or anything like that,” he said. “It’s something that’s still there. It’s everyone’s dream to play Test cricket and I’m no different.”
Liam Dawson
Dawson has been a regular in England squads of all hues for many years, but has only played three Tests and none since 2017. He has, however, continued to play regular first-class cricket – not since 2011 has he failed to bowl at least 1,000 deliveries in an English red-ball summer – and his combination of experience, knowledge of England’s players and his left-arm action, which makes him a genuine like-for-like replacement for Leach, makes him an appealing choice.
Rehan Ahmed
Still just 18 years old, Ahmed is a bowler of immense promise who has been fast-tracked into the international set-up, making debuts in all three formats over the last year, and earlier this year he described being involved in the Ashes as a “dream”. But England may feel the need to prioritise the long term, and conclude that they could come to regret throwing Ahmed into the Ashes when he is still so callow.
Will Jacks
Like Ahmed, Jacks made his Test debut in Pakistan last year, taking six wickets in his first innings as an international red-ball bowler, but he is still learning his trade and in three games for Surrey in this year’s County Championship he bowled just 12 overs. “My Test debut has given me the knowledge in my mind that I can be a Test bowler,” he said in February. “A year ago I would not have thought that possible.”
Liam Livingstone
“He bowls off-spin, leg-spin, fields well and smacks the ball out of the park – it’s hard not to get around a player who plays like that,” Brendon McCullum says of Livingstone. One of the world’s hottest T20 properties, Livingstone’s longstanding ambition to play Test cricket was finally realised last winter – but he was viewed as the third-choice spinner in that team, behind Leach and Jacks, and this is a very different prospect.
Another seamer
Of the 125 wickets taken by England in seven Tests held at Edgbaston in the past decade, spinners contributed just 15. In that time it has taken English spinners on average 80.6 deliveries to take a wicket, and seamers 45.4. A list of the past four English spinners to claim Test five-fers at Edgbaston begins with Colin Blythe in 1909. So if England are not fully convinced by the merits of any spinner, and particularly given Ben Stokes’s injury concerns, bolstering the seam attack might be the way to go.
