The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

4 1GS Saturday May 28 2022 | the times

Sport Cricket

length, trying to hit the top of the

stumps, get cut, get pulled. Try to

minimise the amount of times you

can get belted over your head for six.”

“It’s disappointing there’s not a

huge amount more playing Test

cricket,” Waller, 34, says. “I think just

because the control aspect of things

and variation and subtlety is probably

more important in white-ball cricket

than red-ball cricket, where you need

a good stock delivery and that seems

to be quite rare with leg spinners.

Everyone wants to bowl quickly and

rush the batter off the pitch, rather

than necessarily with shape and drift

like a traditional Warne-style bowler.”

In the Vitality Blast we can expect

to see plenty of leg spin, with the likes

of Calvin Harrison and Will Beer

joining the party — and the even

rarer left-arm wrist spin of Jake

Lintott. It is a chance for members of

the brotherhood to cross paths.

Hollman has not played first-class

cricket against many co-conspirators,

recalling only Crane, though Salisbury

chatted to him about leg spin despite

being head coach of the opposition. “If

a leg spinner’s on TV, I enjoy watching

them bowl,” Waller says. “I love the

skill, I love the art of it. I love how silly

you can make batters look.”

Inevitably Warne features in the

origin stories. Hollman remembers

playing as Warne on PlayStation, and

his avatar sarcastically clapping

batsmen who missed. (Munday and

Poysden also cite Mushtaq Ahmed,

who took more than 100 wickets in a

championship season for Sussex but

averaged more than 30 in Tests.)

There was, however, the Warne

paradox: did he make leg spin cool but

also impossible for anyone to follow?

Munday recalls games where he was

expected to bowl round the wicket on

a turning pitch, like international

team-mates had seen Warne do, even

though Munday had never done it

before. “Everyone who bats doesn’t get

compared to Sachin Tendulkar or

everyone who bowls seam to Jimmy

Anderson,” Critchley says.

Another potential paradox: leg spin

gets you picked early, but dropped

early too. Critchley made his

Derbyshire debut at 18 and believes

he would not have played so young

without the skill. “Teams would

always have a look at a leg spinner,”

Poysden says. “It probably got you in

the room a lot because they knew

there could be a massive upside.”

It may be through fear of what has

happened to young leggies that

England have been overcautious with

Parkinson, or it is institutionalised

timidity. Maybe it is simply that they

do not think he is the best spinner

yet: Parkinson was told he was close

to the Test squad when omitted this

month, but given no specific reason.

“If you’re a leg spinner, it’s tough

but you still make sure you’re the best

spinner in that team or you’re the

right man for the job,” Critchley says.

Here lies the challenge for any leg

spinner: be the best slow bowler, not

just the one who happens to use their

wrist.

L

uke Hollman had Josh Baker

in his mind when bowling to

Ben Stokes at Lord’s last

week. Baker, the 19-year-old

Worcestershire left-arm

spinner, had recently been taken for

34 runs in an over. “It was certainly

daunting,” Hollman says. “He played

quite an aggressive reverse-sweep

quite early on to me. Myself and Pete

[Handscomb, the Middlesex captain],

we were of course on the more

defensive side with the field, but I

thought I strung a few balls together

nicely and then he tried to force me

off my length, mis-hit it to mid-on, so

I was pretty happy really.”

The England Test captain had

succumbed to leg spin — and a

21-year-old Englishman. Elsewhere

Rehan Ahmed, the Leicestershire

spinner, was making his County

Championship debut, and Archie

Lenham was in school after taking

four wickets for Sussex the previous

week. Two 17-year-old leggies in first-

class cricket. This country has a

troubled relationship with the art, but

are green shoots visible?

“There’s a bit of excitement around

any leg spinner,” Max Waller, the

Somerset bowler, says. “There’s that

natural variation, that element of

uncertainty. That’s what leg spin’s

about, though; it’s about being

exciting, being a bit different.”

Matt Parkinson has long been the

No 1 jilted leg spinner. In recent

winters the Lancastrian has learnt

how to carry Lucozade in a variety of

climates. England fans have the scent

of a decent leggie, one who is good in

county cricket, and they like it, but his

path to the white-ball team is blocked

by Adil Rashid and Jack Leach has

been preferred as the Test spinner.

Until Parkinson proves otherwise, he

will always be the future great

England ignore.

Why is that? Because all leggies are

compared to one in particular.

“People don’t want leg spinners, they

want Shane Warne,” Mason Crane,

the Hampshire leg spinner, once said.

Warne was arguably the greatest

bowler in history and is No 2 in the

Test-wicket charts. At No 4 is India’s

Anil Kumble, who proved there was

more than one way to bowl leg spin.

Some leggies are tall —Matt

Critchley, of Essex, is 6ft 2in —

and others, such as Rashid, are 5ft

8in. Parkinson, listed as 6ft, bowls

slowly and turns it far; as

slow and far as

CricViz has in

its database.

The ball-of-

the-century imitations go

viral but his economy is

what stands out,

shipping first-class runs

at 2.65 an over, when

leg spinners are

supposedly defined by

profligacy.

“Something that

frustrates me is people

think that just because

you’re a leg spinner, your

control’s not going to be as good, or

— in my case — ‘You’re a leg spinner,

you should rag it,’ ” says Josh

Poysden, a former Warwickshire and

England Lions bowler who retired last

year at 30. “When I was going well, at

times I felt like I had better control

than some seamers or finger spinners

in the second team.”

Critchley, 25, does not think it is all

down to the bowler. “Because they

don’t play you very often, I find a lot

of people will have a game plan to

attack you,” he says. “If people face off

spinners daily, they are happier to sit

on it, whereas people look to come at

leg spinners a lot more. Then there’s a

little bit more inaccuracy with it.”

Leg spin takes on a mystique like

few other cricketing arts. We

daydream: how much spin, drift and

flight could there be under Parkinson’s

high ceiling? Critchley is a middle-

order batsman, the main reason he

gets in a team, but people want to talk

to him about leg spin. “It’s one of

those things where it’s almost like the

phantom art that everyone wants

someone to master,” he says. “The

romance of it.”

When Ian Salisbury

took his first Test wicket

in 1992, it had been 24

years since a specialist

leggie had ensnared a

victim for England in

the format. Salisbury

was picked at 22 and

played 15 Tests over

eight years. Chris

Schofield played two

wicketless Tests at 21. Scott

Borthwick and Crane turned

up in dead-rubber Ashes Tests, and

Rashid played 19 Tests amid his

various format retirements.

Rashid’s control is such that he has

been backed to be a Test leg spinner,

but his wickets came at 39.83. It is not

as though every nation has a thriving

Test leggie either: Rashid Khan and

Yasir Shah, at Nos 36 and 38 in the

Test world rankings, lead the way and

neither, for a variety of reasons, has

played Test cricket this year.

Parkinson is 25 and has played 37

first-class games. At the start of the

summer, he pointed out that he had

played so few matches compared

with the raft of seamers around

the country. Appearances can be

a problem for all spinners in

England, not just those of the

wrist variety.

“Everyone wants to play a

leg spinner and their results

might not match up to the

expectation after five, ten,

maybe even 20 games,”

Critchley says. “But you’ll

see their best after 60, 70

games. That is the

investment that you get

repaid later on, with leg spin

especially.”

Michael Munday is 37. A big

turner who was expensive, he

played the last of his 31 first-class

games in 2010, for Somerset.

Now he turns out for Reigate

Priory CC, and he believes they

have a better Munday than

Somerset ever did. “By the time I

played my last game, when I was 25, I

hadn’t got the best out of what I could

do in terms of constructing a spell of

bowling, rather than just coming and

trying to bowl some leg breaks and

your first three balls go for four

because you weren’t thinking about

what you were doing,” Munday says.

“I’m better than I was when I played

county cricket.”

T20 reinvigorated leg spin but

Munday never played white-ball

cricket. His only List A appearance, for

Cornwall at 16, was with a red ball.

Munday was on the Somerset staff

with Waller, a T20 specialist who made

his championship debut under Justin

Langer, a man accustomed to playing

with Warne. The trust of captain and

coach, as Hollman is experiencing as

Middlesex’s frontline spinner, is key.

Waller’s opportunities came with

the white ball and he has played 143

T20s for Somerset, compared with

nine first-class matches. He bowls

googlies and deliveries out of the

front of the hand, unlike the

consistent stock ball needed in first-

class cricket. “I never learnt how to

bowl in red-ball cricket,” he says.

Hollman explains the difference

between formats. “It’s all to do with

length,” he says. “In red-ball cricket,

you want to drag the batter forward,

do him in the air, whereas in white-

ball cricket it’s bowling back of a

None of the 21 England spinners with

most Test wickets is a leg spinner

Slow left-arm orthodox Off spin

Left-arm orthodox/wrist Leg spin

Derek Underwood (1966-

1982)

Graeme Swann (2008-13)

Moeen Ali (2014-21)

Jim Laker (1948-59)

Tony Lock (1952-68)

Monty Panesar (2006-13)

Fred Titmus (1955-75)

John Emburey (1978-95)

Hedley Verity (1931-39)

Ashley Giles (1999-2006)

Wilfred Rhodes (1899-1930)

Phil Edmonds (1975-87)

David Allen (1960-66)

Ray Illingworth (1958-73)

Phil Tufnell (1990-2001)

Johnny Briggs (1884-99)

Johnny Wardle (1948-57)

Bobby Peel (1884-96)

Colin Blythe (1901-10)

Jack Leach (2018-22)

Pat Pocock (1968-85)

Tich Freeman (1924-29)

Walter Robins (1929-37)

Geoff Miller (1976-84)

Adil Rashid (2015-19)

297

255

195

193

174

167

153

147

144

143

127

125

122

122

121

118

102

101

100

79

67

66

64

60

60

England spinners

with most wickets

T20s, trust and the Warne-factor: why

England can’t produce Test leg spinners

Matt Parkinson can’t get a game in the Test team

although, as Elgan Alderman reports, the county

scene is slowly giving leggies a platform to flourish

2.65

Leg spinners are

deemed expensive but

Parkinson’s economy

rate in first-class cricket

is respectable

ALAN MARTIN/ACTION PLUS/SHUTTERSTOCK

Parkinson has

played only 37

first-class games for

Lancashire; inset,

Waller of Somerset

Leg spinners are too often

compared with Warne

None

most

En

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