Jack Leach

I know Harry Brooks the day before, I know Glenn Maxwell's 200, different types of innings, but the way he batted and controlled the innings was just remarkable.

Well, he did basically the Ben Stokes and Jack Leach innings himself, didn't he? But almost manufactured the whole thing.

But then there was the moment where Gunnar Sankensen gets him out and everyone celebrates who needs to celebrate and everyone commiserates who needs to commiserate.

And then I'm like, why has he not reviewed it? They've got two reviews left.

And I thought we managed the situation really, really well.

And yeah, I mean, his one-not-out gives flashbacks of Jack Leach, doesn't it? You say Jack Leach, yeah.

Probably the best one-not-out he's ever going to get.

So,

They can still qualify, but they do require Pakistan to beat Sri Lanka and then themselves to beat Sri Lanka by a decent margin to overturn that net run rate.

Steven Finn, it was scarcely believable as that partnership built and built and it had shades of Jack Leach and Ben Stokes at Headingley in that famous Ashes Test match.

Yeah, completely and utterly speechless, really, about what we've just seen there.

The game just was never smooth right from the very beginning.

Um, you know, the headlines-wise, who, who...

Uh, Jack Leach is probably the biggest headline, wasn't it? The fact that he's been, um, sort of removed, removed from the scene entirely.

Um, and, and given the surfeit of, um, quality spin bowlers left for England to select in, in particularly in test matches-

Mm-hmm

... um, with the, uh, the, the removal of Liam Dawson from the scene on that score and, and the struggles that some of the, the other guys who've been tried, the younger guys who've been tried have had, um, that's perhaps the, the one that sort of gets a, an eyebrow moving towards the top of the bald head.

So I, I don't think anyone expected Jack Leach to necessarily have a, a contract that England needed that to have full control over him.

Yeah.

I think the surprise came that Marcus North kind of actively said, "Well, look, if, if the second spinner to Bashir, or if you want to have an idea of who we're thinking of picking for that Bangladesh trip, you can see in the contracts." And that, so that means it's, uh, Bashir, Rehan Ahmed, Liam Patterson-White, Mason Crane.

And that's certainly been the drum beat, expendable, that's a better word.

And the drum beat has been that in England for a number of years, going back to that summer where Jack Leach didn't play a single test match in England.

I think it was 2021 or 2022.

And of course, in recent times, Shah Bashir, in other parts of the world too, but two obvious examples in what's happening with Lyon and what's happened in England.

I don't know if it's controversial or not, but, um, Zak Crawley I think is probably the other one.

Are there any bowlers? Jack Leach maybe? Um, uh, but yeah, no, I, I think, I think Crawley because instead of just going off and getting really good at cricket like he should have, he was stuck in the national team and it just didn't help him.

I just think he would have been much better off going off, finding out about his own game, maturing a little bit, fending for himself.

Um, so keeping him around I don't think was particularly good.

Quite a bit here actually.

Um, I just wanna say, first of all, poor old Jack Leach.

You know, he's been part of this national contract story more generally before, but-

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm

...

he said very, very clearly that Jack Leach will not be part of their plans in Bangladesh in February.

He's like, "No, he's not got a contract, but we're not gonna, we're not gonna take him." He we- he went and rattled-