When I first saw Jack Leach bowl six or seven years ago I may have made a similar mistake to the England selectors. Instinctively we all look for a natural athleticism in our young sportsmen that is identifiable by their effortless, feline movement. When everything happens gracefully with time to spare we nod to one another, earmarking another star. It was not like that for me when watching Leach in 2011, or for the selectors in 2017.
Leach does not glide around the field like a gazelle; his muscles seldom ripple. He has lost a lot of hair; unusually he plays cricket in glasses; he does not ooze the eager bravado that can be so reassuring to coaches, who yearn for players that are forever “up for it”. Leach does not quite fit the identikit of the modern super-fit, super-trim sportsman.
Yet in the West Country Leach is a bit of a hero. In the past two seasons he has done as much as anyone with his left-arm orthodox spin to keep Somerset in the first division of the County Championship.
He may never be the complete Test cricketer but at least there may now be the realisation among the selectors – I’ve been convinced of this for a while – that he is the best available spinner in the country, although he has only been summoned to New Zealand after the discovery of a stress fracture in Mason Crane’s back.
Leach learned of his call-up on a Somerset pre-season golf trip to Trevose in Cornwall last week. “I’d just played the worst round of my life. My golf’s shocking. I don’t even enjoy it and I’d just lost to Andy Hurry [Somerset’s new cricket director and a very moderate golfer]. It was a bad day until I got the call. Then it turned into a very good one, with the Somerset boys all so chuffed for me.”
Their delight would have been genuine because Leach is universally liked at Taunton and he is increasingly admired after the way he handled his nightmarish winter of 2016-17, when doubts surfaced about his action after a routine test at Loughborough in September 2016 – no one had ever queried it before. To make matters worse the England and Wales Cricket Board made his situation public in the clumsiest of manners at the end of the tour to India when nearly everyone was puzzled that Liam Dawson rather than Leach had been called up.
“The biggest thing I didn’t like was being worried that I was effectively cheating because that wasn’t something I was trying to do,” Leach recalled.
“I wasn’t trying to gain an advantage from it. I just didn’t understand my bowling well enough. That’s why I look back on it all as a real positive. It made me understand my bowling more and it made me a better bowler. Those lower moments made me stronger. No doubt there will be more. I try not to get too emotional and just learn from every opportunity.”
Leach, now 26, has shown his worth as a doughty competitor in tight situations for Somerset over the past two years – with bat as well as ball.
There is no great mystery about his bowling. He is accurate; he has added more zip to his stock delivery; he is not intimidated by the prospect of bowling on turning pitches – some spinners are – and he has an impressively calm temperament.
He has also trained hard, so he looks physically more robust. Moreover, he is growing in confidence as demonstrated by the way he coped with his first meeting with the national press, which is obviously an awesome experience.
He says he learned much from watching Nathan Lyon during the Ashes. Australia’s Lyon was regarded as an unfashionable, one-dimensional spinner when he started, a bit of a journeyman. Not any more. Perhaps the same could happen to Leach, who is sharp enough to recognise that next winter’s tours to Sri Lanka and West Indies provide him with a big opportunity but he is realistic enough to take nothing for granted in the meantime.
