Jack Leach

Jack Leach's name will forever be associated with the single that he tucked off his hip to score perhaps the most valuable 1 not out in history at Headingley in 2019. He held up an end, cleaning his glasses between deliveries, to play his role in an unbroken tenth-wicket partnership with Ben Stokes worth 76 runs, taking England to an improbable one-wicket victory and squaring the Ashes at 1-1.

Leach, an old-school left-arm spinner who thrived for Somerset in the County Championship, became England's Asia specialist between 2018 and 2024: he played 16 of his first 39 Tests in the subcontinent, winning 11 of them. Highlights included a key role in England's 3-0 whitewash in Sri Lanka in 2018, bouncing back from a mauling at the hands of Rishabh Pant to help them to victory at Chennai in 2021, and the winning moment in England's high-scoring win at Rawalpindi in 2022.

England often seemed reluctant to trust Leach under Joe Root's captaincy, often using him as a last resort, and he was belted around the Gabba by David Warner at the start of the 2021-22 Ashes. He became an automatic pick under Stokes' leadership, taking 46 Test wickets - the third-most of any bowler in the world - in 2022, but was ruled out of the 2023 Ashes with a back stress fracture, hurt his knee in the first Test of their tour to India the following year, and soon found himself behind his young Somerset team-mate Shoaib Bashir in the pecking order.

Leach was born in Taunton, and first taken to the County Ground to watch Somerset when he was a few days old. He played age-group cricket for the county with Jos Buttler, but his progress was altogether slower: as Buttler broke into the first team and, soon after, the England set-up, Leach took a job parking trolleys at Sainsbury's supermarket. But he eventually broke through in 2016, helping Somerset finish second with a haul of 65 wickets at 21 and vindicating their decision to prepare turning pitches at Taunton. He was widely thought to be unfortunate when missing the cut for England's Test tours to Bangladesh and India, but routine tests at Loughborough revealed a kink in his action that meant he exceeded the 15-degree limit on straightening his arm.

He made his Test debut in New Zealand in early 2018, but his real breakthrough came in Sri Lanka later that year, spinning England to a 3-0 series win alongside Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid. His first Ashes series the following summer was encouraging - and came after a vital 92 as nightwatchman against Ireland - but thereafter often found Dom Bess and Moeen preferred to him to help the balance of the team. Leach has never quite shaken the sense that he is an unfortunate cricketer, often afflicted by injury or illness: he lives with Crohn's disease, cracked his skull when fainting in a bathroom as a young player, and has often been unlucky with the timings of injuries: "The thing with me is there is always a tough time around the corner," he once said.