Maybe this says something about the English psyche. Spin requires deception which, perhaps as a hangover from an imperial past, is regarded as faintly ungentlemanly. Or perhaps a culture that values hard work has never trusted a method that can look suspiciously effortless. These are ridiculous theories, of course, but there has to be something more than pitches and scheduling behind English cricket’s perennial ambivalence towards spin.
English spinners have often been treated as curiosities. Monty Panesar became as famous for his disastrous Celebrity Mastermind appearance and urinating on a nightclub bouncer as for his 167 Test wickets. Leach became a cult hero for one run at Headingley and joked that supporters warmed to him because he looked like a village cricketer. Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid have carried a different burden, their faith and British-Asian identities drawing them into conversations about Englishness their white teammates rarely had to navigate. Perhaps the English spinner has never been allowed to be just a bowler.
The problem is at least partly structural. In 2022, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s high-performance review found that just 22% of deliveries in English domestic first-class cricket since 2014 had been bowled by spinners, the lowest proportion of any major cricket nation. Its conclusion was blunt: “Spinners have limited opportunity to develop in the domestic game.”
The Kookaburra ball was introduced into rounds of the County Championship partly to encourage skills marginalised by the more seam-friendly Dukes. Yet counties are asked to develop Test spinners while spending large parts of the season in conditions where they are peripheral.
Bess knows that contradiction. He and Leach emerged at Somerset, one of the few counties prepared to build games around spin, only for the club to receive a 12-point deduction after the pitch used for the 2019 title decider against Essex was judged poor for offering excessive turn.
He describes a merry-go-round in which English cricket identifies a young spinner, backs him, then searches for the next before he has fully developed his trade. Since Graeme Swann retired in 2013 with 255 Test wickets, Ali, Rashid, Leach, Bess and now Shoaib Bashir have all, among others, been presented as the answer.
“Even though I never felt fully settled I did think I’d get a longer run,” Bess says. “At least I hoped I would. But I turned 23 and they wanted someone else. The cycle repeats. It can feel like a bit of a grind. All you can do is do your work and get wickets for your county. But I’m happy with where my game is going.”
There is an irony in English cricket’s obsession with youth. Spin is the sport’s slow-burning craft. Bess talks about only now understanding how to alter his pace for a surface, how to entice a batter and how to “stack numbers” in his favour over a long spell.
“People forget that Swanny only got into the Test side at 29,” Bess says. “Then he played for five or six years in one of the most successful teams we’ve ever produced.”
Bess is 29 now and relishing the prospect of five weeks on dry County Championship pitches. Last week both he and Leach bagged five-fers in victories for Yorkshire and Somerset respectively. A few more of those and the narrative may turn once more.
“You’d like to be thinking that some important people are watching,” Bess says. Six years after Gqeberha, perhaps they still are.
Dom Bess, 29, believes he is in the prime of his career but has been overlooked as a spinner. Photograph: Dave Vokes/Shutterstock
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