England are set to embark on one of the toughest challenges the game has to offer – a Test series against India in India.

Since England’s 2012/13 series victory in India, India have lost just three Tests on home soil, and won every home series they have played.

That success was founded upon the excellence of their spin twins Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann who took 37 wickets between them across the four Tests. This time around England travel with far less experienced spin attack, featuring a trio of Tom Hartley, Rehan Ahmed and Shoaib Bashir who have just 74 career first-class wickets between them. They are led by the far more experienced Jack Leach who is returning from a seven-month spell out injured.

Swann is back in the England fold and has been tasked with mentoring the current crop of spinners, having worked with the England Lions on their training camp to the UAE earlier this winter.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Swann gave the lowdown on the four England spinners that will travel to India with the senior squad.

Jack Leach

Leach is veteran compared to his fellow English spinners. His tally of 124 Test wickets is 50 more than what Hartley, Ahmed and Bashir have combined in first-class cricket. He also has experience of playing in India having taken 18 wickets at 28.27 on England’s most recent tour of the country in 2021. Leach missed the entirety of the 2023 Ashes with a stress fracture, an injury that has kept him out of action since early June.

Swann is not only confident that Leach has recovered from that injury, but is adamant that the Somerset left-arm spinner is in as good shape as he’s ever been. “I tell you what, he’s as fit as any spinner who has ever played cricket for England,” said Swann. “I couldn’t believe it. He took his shirt off and I thought he was posing for a calendar or something. Honestly, you won’t get over it. He’s a machine. He’s like Ken from the Barbie movie.

“Jack is starting to believe now that he’s a world-class Test bowler and that’s what he needed. Probably 80 per cent of the job is believing in yourself when you’re bowling and not panicking and worrying. I believe we would have won the Ashes last year had Jack been playing in those first two Tests. Moeen Ali came in and did as good a job as he could but he’d had no red-ball cricket under his belt and a damaged finger. There’s no way we wouldn’t have bowled them out at Edgbaston had Jack been playing. I can’t wait to see him back.”

Rehan Ahmed

Ahmed is the other capped spinner in the squad having made his Test debut at Karachi in late 2022. It was a successful debut, too. The precocious leg-spinner picked up a five-wicket haul in a victory that sealed a three-nil series win for the visitors. He is yet to play another Test but has since debuted internationally in both white-ball formats. The Leicestershire all-rounder, who averages more than 30 with the bat in first-class cricket is still only 19.

“Rey is an absolute wildcard,” said Swann. “He’s a young leggie and on his day he will get you five wickets. We have seen how good he can be already. There will be days when it might not come out quite right and he’ll be expensive, but he will always come out smelling of roses because he’s a brilliant character. He’s got a bit of swagger about him and I love that.”

Tom Hartley

Hartley, despite his relative lack of experience at first-class level has been touted as a possible inclusion for this squad for some time. His raw attributes – he is taller and quicker than the average finger spinner – have drawn comparisons to England’s nemesis in 2021, Axar Patel.

On Hartley, Swann said: “When I saw Tom in Sri Lanka last winter, he’d barely played any red-ball cricket, but he’s got control and sometimes in India you don’t have to be the biggest turner of the ball. You have to be an Axar Patel-type bowler, able to run up, be metronomic, put it on the spot, get a little bit of rotation on the ball and let the pitch do the work. Let’s not beat about the bush, we’re going to play on some absolute square turners out there after what happened last time.”

Shoaib Bashir

On paper, Bashir’s selection was one of the most left-field England picks of recent times. Bashir wasn’t even in the first-class county infrastructure 18 months ago and has only played six County Championship matches. Like Hartley, it is believed he has the physical traits to succeed in India and his impressive showing on the recent England Lions camp to the UAE saw him usurp more experienced spin options for a place in the senior squad.

“He is a big turner of the ball and is the first person I’ve ever seen with longer fingers than Monty Panesar,” said Swann. ‘The size of his hands is ludicrous. He’s raw, very young and almost wet behind the ears but a lovely lad and I’ve never seen anything quite like his love for cricket and appetite for learning. I’d seen so little of him beforehand and I was immediately impressed.”

Subscribe to the Wisden Cricket YouTube channel for post-match analysis, player interviews, and much more.