Jack Leach left high and dry by an England spinner’s thankless tasks

Being a Test spinner is a little like being a guitarist in Radiohead. There are times when you are absolutely essential to the success of the enterprise. Then there are the times when you are so peripheral you may as well have stayed at home. You’re never quite in, but by the same token you’re never quite out. If Chennai and Sharjah are The Bends, then Trent Bridge on a cloudy early summer’s afternoon is probably analogous to one of the more ambient cuts off Kid A.

When you are an English spinner, the contrast is even sharper. On helpful surfaces, or in the Asian subcontinent, you are frequently expected to run through sides all by yourself. At home, meanwhile, the requirement is for immaculate control, unless the conditions are particularly seamy, in which case you will not be required at all. There are few roles in cricket whose demands are more varied and less reconcilable, where the margins for error are so unforgiving.

Then there is the cultural burden. Somehow you are an avatar for a whole dwindling tribe, a case study for the whole system, for English spin bowling itself as a concept. Perhaps this is why so few manage to do it successfully. It’s hard to concentrate on your job and fulfil your role in the team when nobody is quite sure what that role is, and nobody can really agree on whether the job should even exist.

Certainly when Jack Leach runs up to bowl these days, he looks like a man preoccupied with far weightier issues than line, length and rip.

There is a heaviness to his gait, a stiffness to the way his arm comes over, an innate caution that shrouds him like static electricity. Since his debut in 2018, according to Cricviz data, he has gradually become a flatter, shorter, quicker bowler. He hurries