Legspinners remain a romanticised breed in English cricket, and Mason Crane’s call-up for the Sydney Test is the latest chapter in the saga. However, in the past 50 years, their selections – and success – have been few and far between
Andrew Miller03-Jan-2018Robin Hobbs (1967-71) seven Tests, 12 wickets at 40.08Robin Hobbs bowling for Essex•Getty ImagesEnglish legspinners weren’t quite such a rarity when Hobbs made his England bow in the summer of 1967 – the likes of Tommy Greenhough and Bob Barber were a recent enough memory, not to mention Warwickshire’s Eric Hollies (whose scalping of Don Bradman for a duck in his final Test innings rather overshadowed his other 2322 first-class wickets). However, Hobbs’ ebullient character, allied to teasing flight and a cunning googly, couldn’t quite translate to the highest level. His seven Tests were stretched across four years and three continents, but he never bettered the nine wickets at 28.77 that he claimed in his maiden series, a 3-0 win over India in 1967. Arguably his greatest claim to fame came at Chelmsford in 1975, when he slogged a century in 44 minutes against the touring Australians, to this day one of the fastest innings to three figures ever recorded, and a remarkable outlier in a career batting average of 12.11.Ian Salisbury (1992-2000) 15 Tests, 20 wickets at 76.95Ian Salisbury bowls for Surrey•Martin WilliamsonSt John’s Wood was awash with sighs of romantic contentment when the 22-year-old Salisbury was picked to make his Test debut at Lord’s in 1992, a counterpoint to the whirling limbs of Pakistan’s Mushtaq Ahmed and, for one unforgettable Test, so nearly his equal. Flush with the optimism of youth, Salisbury ripped his legbreaks “with an arm as perpendicular as a spire” (© David Frith) to help reduce Pakistan to 95 for 8 in the fourth innings. Glory beckoned, only for Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis to rip the contest from his grasp in a climax for the ages. That, alas, would prove to be Salisbury’s zenith. A move to Surrey delivered riches on the county circuit, albeit as a foil to Saqlain Mushtaq, but at Test level, he increasingly bowled like an impostor. The end, when it came, was humiliating – a solitary wicket at 193 on England’s otherwise triumphant tour of Pakistan. Perversely, he owed his selection in all three Tests to his increasingly indomitable tailend batting, a trait that implied that he could have had the ticker to last the course, had his action not been so prone to collapse.Chris Schofield (2000) 2 Tests, no wicketsChris Schofield bowls against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge, May 2000•Getty ImagesBrash and bottle-blond, Schofield owed his England call-up to a whim and a prayer. The end of the Salisbury experiment, allied to Shane Warne’s continued Ashes hegemony, persuaded the selectors to take a leap into the unknown in their desperation to find a leggie worthy of the name, and promote an unknown 21-year-old on the strength of two seasons with Lancashire and a solitary England A tour. Unwisely, in hindsight, Schofield was also handed one of the ECB’s original 12 England central contracts – a development that could have been justified by the need to nurture a brittle talent, but arguably projected the impression that he had already done the hard yards. He failed to bowl a single over in a seam-dominated debut at Lord’s in May 2000, and a sparky half-century in his second Test at Trent Bridge couldn’t atone for his erratic offerings. He was quietly put out to pasture, but earned a remarkable England recall seven years later, as part of their plans for the inaugural World T20 in South Africa. His second coming wasn’t a rip-roaring success, but it did hint at the opportunities that the shorter form would soon be offering to the wristspinning fraternity.Scott Borthwick (2014) 1 Test, four wickets at 20.50Scott Borthwick bowls on debut•Getty ImagesIf Mason Crane is looking for inspiration ahead of his Ashes debut in Sydney, he’d do well to look away now. There was nothing pretty or auspicious about Borthwick’s appearance at the fag end of the 2013-14 debacle. Graeme Swann’s hasty retirement had left a beaten team utterly unbalanced. Monty Panesar was ditched, for the final time in his own unfulfilled career, to make way for a promising all-round option who had been braced for a winter of Sydney grade cricket ahead of his improbable promotion. Four wickets across two innings was a passable return in the circumstances, but England’s three-day crushing told a truer story. And there the trail went abruptly cold. Borthwick’s return to the green, green seamers of Chester-le-Street meant he was limited to just 13 wickets in the 2014 home season. Though his batting continued to develop to such an extent that he was touted as England’s new No. 3 in the summer of 2016, his move south to Surrey actually resulted in an even lighter bowling workload.Adil Rashid (2015-16) 10 Tests, 38 wickets at 42.78Adil Rashid broke the century stand when he removed M Vijay•AFPSomething just hasn’t quite stacked up in Rashid’s abortive Test career. In the shorter formats, he’s made himself into an indispensable asset – not least during the World T20 in India in 2016 when his ability to wheedle out well-set sloggers was a key factor in England’s march to the final. But at Test level, it’s been decided that he lacks a certain. “Not enough speed through the air”, “not enough control of his variations”, “not enough ‘hunger’ for the five-day game” – all these verdicts and more have been thrown in his direction, including a damning assertion from Yorkshire that he doesn’t get enough top-order wickets. What cannot be denied is that his best bowling in Test cricket followed swiftly on from a grim baptism, which implies a certain equanimity, if nothing else. Against Pakistan at Abu Dhabi in 2015-16, he returned maiden innings figures of 0 for 163 – the most expensive ever recorded by a Test debutant – but bounced back from that three days later with 5 for 64, a haul that all but propelled England to a startling final-day victory. The following winter, he picked up 30 wickets in seven Tests in Bangladesh and India, but that wasn’t enough to earn him an Ashes berth.
