The ballad of Jack Leach: a leaf blown along the road and into the Ashes | Barney Ronay

A spin bowler with no back-up is basically someone bowling slowly and hoping for the best

At what point in the ledger of brutal, sapping days, of boundary-fumbling jeers and spiralling numbers, does a tour from hell tick over into something more human and manageable: a tour from limbo or purgatory, from the uneasy netherworld of the merely very bad?

English spinners have tended to die the most public of sporting deaths in Australia. Take the long view and the realistic goal for these brave, lost boys, these gadabouts in Napoleonic uniforms marching in single file across the flatlands, is to avoid being the worst guy, the one with the quiz question numbers, the English spin bowler who gets to define this four-yearly horror.