Matthew Jack Leach, a left-arm orthodox spinner who loves the idea of tossing up the ball like a traditional spinner of the 1900s. Leach has been consistently playing as a bowler in the English domestic set-up since 2012 but he is most celebrated for two of his outings with the bat in 2019. 

He played second fiddle to Ben Stokes’ 2019 Headingley wonders, where he perhaps took the most valuable single in his career before Stokes landed the KO punch. The most beloved second description for Leach came earlier that year when he scored 92 runs against Ireland to save his national side from a cross-border embarrassment.

A nerdy supermarket employee, nicknamed Nut, came to the domestic setup in 2010 in the Minor Counties Cricket Championship and became an overnight hero during his Somerset debut versus Proteas when he got the prized scalp of Hashim Amla. He made his county debut in 2012 and it was not until 2019 when Leach got his reward of making an appearance at the international arena.

Leach’s breakthrough came during the 2016 season when his county decided to put on a spinning deck and the left-armer flourished. The Somerset spinner took 65 County Championship wickets in the season at a staggering average of 21.87.

Leach made his Test debut against New Zealand at Christchurch and was seen as a solution for England’s long-lasting problem of not having a consistent spinner since Graeme Swann. He had a solid welcome to the top level but got his thumb injured and was forced out of action for six months. 

In 2019, during the one-off Test against Ireland, Leach played one of the best, if not the best, knocks by a nightwatchman of 92 runs, which later extended to be his ticket to Ashes. Since then, he has been a regular feature in the English Test team.

In 2021, the spinner helped his national side clinch an unassailable series win over Sri Lanka. He took 10 wickets in the series, which still is the most by an Englishman in Sri Lanka. Leach, alongside Moeen Ali and Dom Bess, stunned the Islanders and secured England’s first series win in Sri Lanka since 2001. 

After his heroics in Sri Lanka, Leach got onto the plane for a lethal challenge against the Indians in India. Along with Root and Sibley, Leach was the only cricketer to have played all six Tests of England’s winter and finished as the leading wicket-taker by a long stretch with 34 scalps. 

Leaving Asia with an enhanced reputation, Leach was no doubt the undisputed first-choice spinner but he was surprisingly dropped from the home Test series against New Zealand and India. A shocking snub left Leach wondering about the 2021 Winter Ashes but he is still determined to bounce back and prove his potential to the selectors.

(As of August 2021)