‘I still want to play safe, but Stokesy won’t have it anymore’
Leach on special bond with captain, seizing new ball and recovering from Indian failure
EDGBASTON’S post-match celebrations were a couple of drinks deep when Jack Leach came out with the line that best sums up England’s revolutionary new approach to Test cricket. Rival teams might be better, he told a delirious dressing room, but none would be braver, after they transformed a record run chase of 378 into a seven-wicket cruise in defeating India.
‘It was the realisation from me that India played a lot of the cricket in that game. For three days, we had been outplayed,’ Leach tells The Mail On Sunday.
‘They’ve got a great team, it feels like they’ve got all bases covered, but that mentality we seem to have at the moment allowed us to go and be daring, to play in that way. Our way. That’s what we are capable of.
‘Sometimes the only people stopping you playing the way you want are yourselves. I think I’d had a beer and started chatting a bit of rubbish but I guess the game of Test cricket is played so much in the mind, and that’s what I wanted to get across.’
As did Ben Stokes, the on-field orchestrator of England’s jeopardy-facing Test cricket strategy, who borrowed Leach’s words during post-match media commitments to explain the attitude necessary for a team who have gone from being unable to buy a win to one who gamble the house on it and hit the jackpot.
But as Leach explains, ahead of an attempt to win a fifth straight match of 2022 against World Test Championship leaders South Africa this week at Lord’s, the daring nature does not come naturally.
Particularly for Leach, whose modus operandi in establishing himself as England’s first-choice spinner was risk averse, testing opponents’ patience with metronomic accuracy. Therefore a request from the think-tank of Stokes and coach Brendon
‘There are times when I want to revert back, when I want to stick mid-on or mid-off back and I’m probably leaning towards that safer way of going about things,’ he says. McCullum ‘to bowl more attacking balls for a longer period of time,’ has taken some getting used to.
‘But when Stokesey tells you: “No, you’re having the man in”, I know that’s okay because then if the batter comes down the pitch and whacks me for six he’s clapping me.
‘It’s not about the end result, it’s about the process in this team now and that message is something that’s really easy to follow. Some days that is going to go really well for you and on others it won’t come off but as long as we have a way of doing things and trust it, we believe it will work more times than not, and that’s really exciting.’
Never in international cricket have things come off as well for the Somerset slow left-armer as they
did in the third Test against New Zealand when, bowling to fields that challenged the opposition to hit him over the top, he joined Graeme Swann as only the second England spinner in 50 years to take a 10-wicket haul at Headingley.
It highlighted a drastic transformation in fortunes for Leach. Until then, he had not taken a wicket on the first day of seven previous home
Tests. In the second innings, in keeping with Stokes’s fondness for the unconventional, he was thrown the new ball. ‘I’m learning to love these things,’ he laughs.
Typical of his England career to date, though, a peak was soon followed by a trough as Rishabh Pant’s savagery left him nursing figures of 9-0-71-0, and wounded pride, in the first innings in Birmingham the following week.
‘That’s the ups and downs of Test cricket, and I guess guys are allowed to play well. Of course, you don’t want to be on the receiving end but it’s 100-per-cent easier to take when you know the captain is backing you,’ he reflects.
Rather than adopt a cautionary approach, Stokes’s reaction second time around was to thrust his spinner back towards the danger. Not for the first time this summer, risk morphed into reward as Pant reverseswept him straight to slip.
The strong relationship between the pair dates back to that extraordinary afternoon in Leeds three years ago when Leach played the most famous one not out in Ashes history, with Stokes for company.
The ability to combat adverse situations tell you most about a player’s character, and Leach has overcome plenty. There has been living with Crohn’s disease, the remodelling of his action in 2016, the thumb fracture on the eve of the home series against Pakistan in 2018 and his hospitalisation due to sepsis in New Zealand the following year.
His image — bald and bespectacled — belies his toughness. But Stokes clearly values it, selecting Leach for the second Test once
it was clear that he was clear from concussion, rather than retaining his temporary replacement, Lancashire leg-spinner Matt Parkinson.
In his desire to fully commit to the new ethos, Leach had dived full-length to save a boundary on the opening morning at Lord’s and banged his neck and head in the process.
England stuck with Leach again, despite it taking 152 deliveries for his initial breakthrough at Trent Bridge, and were rewarded when his last winter’s work alongside spin coach Jeetan Patel, to impart a greater number of revolutions on the ball, came to fruition in a careertopping Test return.
‘Jeets has helped me a lot with this. People will have seen how he bowled, with lots of extremely aggressive deliveries pace-wise and with the over-spin on the ball, and I am learning about those things,’ says Leach.
‘The way people come at you in international cricket has taught me about what pace I need to bowl. Not just fast and flat with nothing on it.’
And for Leach the threat doesn’t only come from opposition teams. Since Stokes succeeded Joe Root, rival spinners Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid have made noises about returning to Test duty with England.
But he insists: ‘I am focusing on me and trying to do a good job for the team. I feel that backing, which is lovely. Yet I also have so much respect for both of those guys.
‘Moeen is someone I have spent quite a lot of time with and he’s helped me massively. He welcomed me in when I first went out to New Zealand on tour and he’s been so supportive.
‘He’s such a good player too and if he wants to play, I have no issue with that. There will be places where we can potentially play together. I don’t see that as a bad thing and any kind of England setup with Moeen around it is going to be a good one. He’s a legend of a bloke and a gun player.’
Those selection conversations are likely to remain on hold until December’s tour of Pakistan, where England will consider fielding two spinners.
For now, Leach is savouring going solo in England’s brave new world, and attempting to add the scalp of South Africa to those of New Zealand and India in Test cricket’s opening stanza of 2022.
‘We’re always trying to make a play in the game, regardless of the scoreboard, and I guess that keeps everyone focused on the moment rather than looking at the bigger picture,’ he adds.
‘People may say that we will get tested along the way but we already have been tested by the way the games have gone. We’ve been behind and still won.’