“Feels like: 9C,” reads my phone’s weather app, as a violent wind howls across the field at Loughborough University. The trees on campus are orange. Autumn is here.
It is a stark contrast from the baked red soil of southern India but it is here that small steps are being taken to redefine English cricket’s chequered relationship with the turning ball.
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The England and Wales Cricket Board is holding its second spin camp of the summer, and Telegraph Sport has been invited along for a look.
The idea is simple: to get some of the most promising youngsters in the English game – both batsmen and spin bowlers – in one place, with expert coaches and roughed up pitches, to focus exclusively on the turning ball.
There are some familiar faces, and others we might know better in a few years’ time. In his capacity as England Lions head coach, Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff is in charge, while managing director Rob Key mingles and watches on. The star turn is Kumar Sangakkara, one of the greatest ever players of spin, who has been roped in by Key.
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Rob Key, the England men’s team’s managing director, has persuaded his former Sky colleague Kumar Sangakkara to pass on his expertise on how to play the turning ball – Adrian Sherratt for The Telegraph
There is a round of County Championship matches happening and England are in Ireland, so the players in attendance are young. England spinner Shoaib Bashir, overlooked by Somerset again, is the second-oldest player at 21, while arguably the two outstanding teenage batsmen in the country, Somerset’s Thomas Rew and Hampshire’s Ben Mayes, are among those taking tips from Sangakkara.
Shoaib Bashir, who cannot get a game for Somerset despite being England’s No 1 spinner, was at the camp overseen by Lions head coach, Flintoff – Adrian Sherratt for The Telegraph
This is the second camp Sangakkara has worked on. The first, in July, featured older, more established players such as Jacob Bethell, Rehan Ahmed and Rew’s older brother, James. Former England spinners Graeme Swann and Richard Dawson coached the spinners (they have been replaced this time by Adil Rashid’s brother Amar, and the Leicestershire pathway coach Jigar Naik).
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Not every player who attends is necessarily on England’s radar, but a promising showing here can lead to acceleration. Onlookers were impressed by the ambidextrous Ben Kellaway, who has had an excellent season for Glamorgan, at the first camp.
In the week after the first camp, Rehan scored a century and took 13 wickets for Leicestershire and Tom Hartley, another attendee, scored a hundred and took 11 wickets for Lancashire. “Maybe that was a coincidence, but you would hope that the themes we spoke about gave the lads confidence and clarity on how to take their games forward,” smiles Ed Barney, the ECB’s performance director, who has pulled the camps together.
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This is day two of a three-day camp. The coaches met for 30 minutes to discuss the day ahead. In the morning, the focus is on white-ball cricket, where so much spin is bowled in almost all conditions. There are two nets set up on Loughborough’s second square (the first is hosting the second XI final between Surrey and Worcestershire). As with every England net session these days, a boom box is blasting, and Flintoff is in charge of the tunes. The playlist is pure eighties: Thriller, Africa, Uptown Girl.
The first pitch is dry, and a little scuffed, and the net above it is closed. Sangakkara is doing detailed technical work with a couple of batsmen on the foundations of their game, while Naik works with the bowlers. The other net has a very worn pitch, and no roof, so the ball is flying everywhere, and some of the shots are outrageous.
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In here, Flintoff is running a scenario session in which the batsmen have been given a target to chase in order to improve their decision-making. The bowler, with Flintoff, decides where his fielders are, and Flintoff keeps score. Every half-hour or so, there is a debrief – Flintoff with the batsmen and Rashid with the bowlers – and the analyst’s camera is set up for a full review at the end of the day.
Flintoff, right, ran a scenario session in his net followed by a debrief with the batsmen to discuss what they had learnt – Adrian Sherratt for The Telegraph
“We’re really lucky at Loughborough,” says Barney. “They’re very flexible. They’ve prepared one wicket that turns very aggressively, and the other turns moderately. But both are different from what these lads experience day to day in the English game.”
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Barney says the ECB has been doctoring pitches in their regional age-group competitions, the Bunbury Festival (U15s) and Super 4s (U17s). “We made them day-four type pitches,” he says. “Nothing excessive, but we want to test our players in different ways.”
The oft-derided Kookaburra ball experiment in the Championship was also designed to promote spinners (and has worked, in some regards), while England will take a group of their best young batsmen to the subcontinent in January for another camp that is all about facing spin.
Sangakkara might have taken a few wickets for his village club, Shillingstone in Dorset, over the last couple of years, but he is here to talk batting. His credentials are second to none: he sits seventh on the list of all-time Test run-scorers, with 12,400. None of the other 18 men with more than 9,000 Test runs have a better average than his 57.4 (a figure which rises to 66.8 in the 86 Tests in which he did not keep wicket). In Asia, he averaged 61.5 and made 30 centuries.
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Sangakkara ran a red-ball clinic on the doctored pitches, focusing at first on defence – Adrian Sherratt for The Telegraph
He also knows the English game inside out, having toured many times, and averaged 63 across three seasons with Surrey between 2015 and 2017, as well as commentating for Sky since.
“When I played county cricket, you have very little exposure to spinners,” he remembers. “The pitches aren’t conducive to it, and the captaincy of spin is not as advanced as you get in countries where spin is the norm.”
Listening to Barney, it is easy to see the camp as almost an intervention scheme. The County Championship is played in the margins of the summer, so Surrey are going for a fourth title on the bounce without a regular spinner in their side, and the pitch inspectors are called every time a ball turns at Taunton.
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“I don’t think the county game and how it’s structured and the wickets that are prepared, are naturally conducive to high volumes of spin bowling,” said Barney. “That affects both the guys bowling spin, but also those batting against it. What we have the opportunity to do here is to prepare pitches that are more akin to what they might be exposed to in the subcontinent or other parts of the world. It’s an in-depth opportunity to explore their games with high-quality coaches.”
Nevertheless, it is not all doom and gloom. Barney recognises that there are strengths in England’s handling of spin; in white-ball cricket, data says they generally play it well in the powerplay, then struggle in the middle overs, for instance. And Sangakkara has a surprising perspective.
‘Some of the best players of spin are English’
“English cricketers have improved vastly in terms of how they play spin,” he says. “Much more than most sides in the world. From a Sri Lankan perspective I actually think we have regressed slightly. One of the first things to understand is how important spin is. It’s more important than ever, with the rise of T20.
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“But what I like about England now is the mindset change: they are looking for flair and unique approaches, a bit of spark and skill. That has freed English players up. I genuinely think some of the best players of spin in the world are English.”
Sangakkara says he is trying to focus on the mental side of the game and shot selection with the youngsters, rather than getting overly technical. But he crouches close behind the net and gives gentle instructions such as “get your head closer to the ball, Thomas”.
“The real key for me is understanding the player is at the centre of what you do, not the coach,” he says. “You can’t be fixed to a philosophy, just try to understand the player’s game, but also his personality, mentality, mindset. Every player is at a different stage of their evolution.”
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When the players return after an hour’s lunch break, the sight screens are being changed from black to white, signalling a move to a red-ball focus. This time, there is no scenario batting: just repetitive drills.
Sangakkara roams between the two nets, and starts by telling the batsmen that for a period of around 15 minutes, they have to play a forward defence to every ball, no matter the line or length. For 15 minutes after that, they have to play a backward defence to every ball, no matter the line or length. With smiles on their faces, the players find this tricky, reining in their attacking instincts.
“When you’re on troubled pitches, the first thing you do is get nervous about your defence,” says Sangakkara. “This is to try to assure them, even though you’d never do it in a match, that it’s not that difficult, and they can trust their defence and use it to any ball if they need to. Even as the game changes, defence is the foundation of your game.”
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Sangakkara says he tries not to get too technical but places great emphasis on the mental side of the game – Adrian Sherratt for The Telegraph
Before long, Sangakkara has the players coming down the track to every ball, and then finally playing each one on its merits. The attacking strokes return with a vengeance.
As I chat to Barney, Bashir takes a break from bowling to pick Sangakkara’s brains about how he can best counter the sort of aggressive batting he will no doubt face in this winter’s Ashes. Bashir is the only capped player here, and Barney impresses that it is not all about England. He hopes that a rising tide will lift all boats in domestic cricket.
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“We could be really targeted, and only invite a couple of players along to work with Kumar,” he says. “The reality is lots of these players are multiple years away from playing for England, but this is an opportunity to bring people together. Not all of them will play for England, but by being here hopefully we can challenge some of the ideas they’ve grown up with and expose them to more. Hopefully some of those ideas then ripple across the English game.”
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