How typical that after a winter worrying about batting luxuries and a spring spent fretting over a diminishing but still enviable wealth of seam reserves, it is England’s cupboard least well stocked that, as the summer begins, appears to have run bare.
The puzzling over where Jonny Bairstow would slot back in was billed as the proverbial nice problem to have; scares over the fitness of James Anderson and Ollie Robinson set, hopefully, to prove false alarms; but news of Jack Leach’s stress fracture does not fit either brief.
The spinner, the sole frontline option in England’s Ashes squad, is out of the series, confirmed on Sunday evening after he had experienced discomfort in the win over Ireland at Lord’s on Saturday.
Given Leach’s history of injury and, in particular, illness issues, it seems peculiar now that more thought was not given, in the cricketing public discourse, to what a Leach-less England might look like this summer until it became a reality on Sunday night, though nor is it difficult to understand why.
In a team full of them, Leach is not among England’s sexier cricketers and, to the more casual observer, remains as well known as the cult figure of 2019 adulation as the player emboldened by the backing of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum over the last 12 months.
There may have been an element of the taking for granted at play, too: no one has played more Tests (all 13), bowled more overs (515) or taken more wickets (45) under the new leadership than Leach and thus his ever-presence was always bound to extend to Edgbaston on June 16.
Perhaps most pertinently, the lack of viable options did not make for much of a debate. It is one, however, that is now being had behind closed doors, England yet to announce a replacement but expected to do so in the coming days.
The established pecking order for spinners is less muddled and more like non-existent, Stokes’s England having tended to trust Leach as the only specialist not only in the playing XI but in their squads. As a result, every alternative is to some extent or another out of left field.
Matt Parkinson is the only other out-and-out spinner to have featured since the start of last summer, as a concussion substitute for Leach against New Zealand at Lord’s, but has fallen off the radar.
It looks just as likely that England will go into the Ashes opener with a four-pronged seam attack
Will Jacks and Rehan Ahmed both made debuts on the tour of Pakistan and each marked the occasion with five-fors, but did so bowling in tandem with Leach. Either the Surrey all-rounder or the teenage leggie would be an exciting, on-brand pick, but both remain inexperienced red-ball bowlers and playing a leading role against Australia would be a huge ask.
Liam Dawson, the 33-year-old Hampshire left-armer, may be a safer pair of hands, though that is not the way this regime tends to tilt. Sending out the signal to Moeen Ali would be more radical, the all-rounder having teased a Test return under McCullum last year. Any of that quartet would also bolster England’s batting, bridging the current chasm between a blockbuster top seven and a tail that starts in earnest at No8.
At this stage, though, it looks just as likely that England will go into the Edgbaston opener with a four-pronged seam attack, the possibility that Mark Wood, Robinson and Anderson could regain their places without Stuart Broad losing his, leaving Joe Root to bowl part-time spin.
That may prove a sound enough balance assuming wickets in the first half of the series, at least, do not turn, though the loss of Leach’s overs and propensity to hold an end heightens, if possible, the importance of Stokes’s fitness to bowl.
Leach is not a bowler who strikes fear into opposing batters and Australia no doubt had plans to get after the spinner, just as they did Down Under 18 months ago. The news, last night, of his absence is unlikely to have drawn whoops and hollers from Camp Baggy Green.
But when all is said and done, eight weeks from now it may just come to prove these Ashes’ first significant blow.
