England roll the dice with teen leg-spinner for crucial Lord’s Test

England’s decision to call up 18-year-old leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed as cover for injured veteran Moeen Ali could be made redundant, with the Lord’s pitch expected to again favour seam bowlers.

Jamie Cox, the former prolific Tasmania opening batsman and head of cricket and operations at the Marylebone Cricket Club, which owns Lord’s, said faster bowlers had claimed most of the wickets in county matches at the historic ground this season.

“I can only talk of the cricket I’ve watched here and most recently it doesn’t spin a lot,” Cox told this masthead. “If you get a nice dry Test, it will certainly spin as the game progresses, but it’s not the surface in England that I would associate the most with the ball spinning out of big footmarks. I would guess that seam would do most of the damage here.”

Seamers have dominated Test matches at Lord’s since Australia’s last Ashes tour in 2019, making up the top 11 most successful bowlers at the ground in that time, taking a total of 120 wickets. The two leading bowlers are Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, with 14 wickets each in four Tests.

The leading spinner is Jack Leach, with five wickets in three Tests, and he has been ruled out of the Ashes series with a back injury. The next best spinner is Moeen, with three wickets in one Test at an average of 46.

Having made a shock return after retiring from Test cricket almost two years ago, Moeen was in no condition for long-form cricket in the first Test at Edgbaston, suffering a gash in his spinning finger from the extra wear and tear of bowling 33 overs in Australia’s first innings. He managed just 14 overs in the second innings when England needed him to bowl on the drying pitch on the last day. Australia won the Test by two wickets in dramatic circumstances as Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon put on 55 runs for the eighth wicket to get the visitors home.

For all the talk about England’s ultra-aggressive Bazball approach, there are serious questions about their planning. While Ahmed was listed as a sub for Leach and then Moeen, his inclusion in the England squad is based largely on hope.

He made an impressive debut in Pakistan in December, claiming seven wickets in his only Test, and he has played all three forms on the subcontinent for his country.

However, in county cricket his batting has been more productive than his bowling. Playing for Leicestershire in Division Two of the county championship, he has taken just six wickets at 67.7 this season, but has scored four half-centuries.

England appear to have no clear plan for their back-up spinners, calling Moeen out of retirement on the back of a one-word text from captain Ben Stokes that read, “Ashes?”, which Moeen originally thought was a joke. He has suffered the same overuse finger injury that hindered him during the 2017-18 Ashes tour of Australia.

England are likely to recall express bowler Mark Wood for the second Test. The original theory was that he would replace Anderson, who was below his best at Edgbaston. However, given the Moeen injury, Ahmed’s lack of development and the inability of Stokes to bowl many overs because of a chronic knee injury, England could play four seamers and use Joe Root as their spinner at Lord’s.

Root bowled well at Edgbaston until Australia captain Pat Cummins hit him for two sixes in three balls, setting the visitors on a course for a most unlikely victory.

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