Outside Asia, is Jack Leach the Test spinner England are looking for?

After a solitary Test in New Zealand, Adil Rashid and then Moeen Ali were preferred for the 2018 home summer before the trio combined to great effect as they spearheaded England’s charge to a mightily impressive three-nil win in Sri Lanka later that year. Leach was statistically the most impressive of the three, taking his 18 wickets at 21.38 with an economy rate of 2.69.

Despite that showing, the number one spinner berth alluded Leach until the second Test of the 2019 Ashes. Since then, he has played 17 Tests and has been in and out of the side, partly through illness, but also through form and team balance.

Not since 2019 has Leach played three consecutive Tests outside Asia, something he is set to do if he is retained for the Grenada fixture.

There was a school of thought during the Ashes series that Leach was mishandled by England in the build-up to the marquee tour, not playing at all in the 2021 home summer before being parachuted into Brisbane, a spinner’s graveyard against a side sniffing blood. His total absence that summer, partly due to the desire to balance the side in the absence of Ben Stokes, hinted at a level of mistrust from the England hierarchy towards their left-arm tweaker. 21 Tests into his England career, it is hard to decipher how Leach is regarded within the England camp, or where the direction of his Test career is likely to go from here.

The most striking aspect of Leach’s Test numbers is the discrepancy between his first and second innings record. Spinners generally fare better in the second innings when they’re handed worn surfaces that are generally more receptive to spin, but it is rare that the difference in performance is as stark as it is for Leach.

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His first innings average is a heady 50.17; in the second innings, it drops to 20.82. Outside Asia – where Leach has played nine of his Tests – that first innings averages rockets up to 65.41 but his second innings averages of 21.77 remains impressive. Leach relies on the pitch in his attempts to deceive batters more than most. It has been noticeable in the Caribbean how rarely he beats batters through the air.

His overall non-Asia record – 30 wickets at 39.23 – is worse than Moeen’s and only a shade better than Dom Bess’ (40.57). Bess, who has not played for England since last year’s tour of India, has both a better economy rate than Leach outside Asia. In the first innings, Leach’s average is the worst among English specialist spinners to have taken as many wickets as he has outside Asia (12). Another quirk of Leach’s record that his numbers in England – 12 wickets at 28 – are good, but he hasn’t played a home Test in nearly three years.

Leach’s record in county cricket is noticeably inferior in the last two years compared to his time before he went nearly 10 months without a first-class game due to a combination of the pandemic and also his own ill health. Since the start of the pandemic Leach has taken 21 first-class non-Test wickets at 32.09; in the preceding two home summers, he took 64 wickets sat 20.59.

Despite those first innings numbers it may be that England are relatively content with the service that he provides. His first innings economy rate is less than three runs per over, so he does do a decent job of containing the opposition even if he isn’t a persistent wicket-taking threat.

But it also may be that England want more from their primary spinner. England didn’t come particularly close to taking 20 wickets in Antigua and it looks like they’ll be even further from doing so in Barbados. If the pitch in Grenada is anything like the two served up so far this series, the allure of Matt Parkinson’s leg-spin to just have someone capable of creating chances without an over reliance on the pitch could be too great to resist.