INSIDE CRICKET: Bold investment in talent and youth has been a hallmark of Bazball - it makes England's reluctance to test the water with Rehan Ahmed all the more baffling

England, as they tend to, named their team for today’s first one-day international against South Africa at Headingley more than 24 hours in advance. 

And missing from the XI, as he tends to be, was Rehan Ahmed, the leg-spinner whose batting has improved to the extent that he went in at No 3 for Trent Rockets during the Hundred, above Marcus Stoinis, Sam Hain and David Willey.

It is nearly two years now since Ahmed produced a white-ball performance that persuaded this onlooker he was ready to step into the shoes of Adil Rashid.

England were struggling to defend a total of 175 in a long-forgotten T20 international against New Zealand at Trent Bridge, but Ahmed stood out: two for 27 off four overs, when everyone else went for around 10 or more, including Rashid (4–0–41–0).

He looked the part, yet when England finalised their squad for the 50-over World Cup starting in India the following month, Ahmed was not among the names. A team which, by the mid-tournament admission of Moeen Ali, was in desperate need of fresh blood, stumbled around the subcontinent in one of cricket’s worst title defences. 

Ahmed might have made no difference. Then again, he could hardly have fared worse, and would now have a World Cup in Asia on his CV.

Ever since he was thrown in to international cricket against Pakistan in Karachi aged 18 years and 126 days – his country’s youngest Test cricketer, beating Brian Close’s 73-year-old record by 23 days – Ahmed has been the shiny new toy England haven’t quite dared to play with, in case it breaks.

The fact that he began with a second-innings five-for, including the high-class quartet of Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Saud Shakeel and Salman Agha, only heightened the excitement.

Yet in the three years since, Ahmed has played only four more Tests, six ODIs and 10 T20s, and has averaged, respectively, 31, 23 and 25 – excellent numbers for a young player trying to make his mark in the hardest art of the game.

And when he has played, he hasn’t always been well handled. At Rawalpindi in December, he was the victim of a rare piece of unsympathetic captaincy from Ben Stokes. 

At lunch on the second day of the deciding Test, Ahmed had figures of 9–2–25–3, having outfoxed Rizwan, Agha and Aamer Jamal, and Pakistan were 187 for seven in reply to 267. Yet Stokes ignored Ahmed for the first eight overs after the break, allowing Shakeel and the tail to play themselves in, and eventually establish a match-winning lead.

It was baffling captaincy and, while it later emerged that Stokes’s mind had been elsewhere, for a variety of reasons, it was hard to resist the conclusion that English cricket’s age-old aversion to leg-spin had reared its head once more.

The ancient wisdom has it that Australia, with its hard, flat pitches, is the land of fast bowlers and leg-spinners, while England, which has traditionally served up damp puddings, spawns safety-first medium-pacers and off-spinners. Australia’s leading leg-spinner, Shane Warne, took 708 Test wickets; England’s, Tich Freeman, took 66, and played his last Test in 1929.

The prejudice is equally ingrained at county level, where Ahmed this season has bowled only 164 championship overs for Leicestershire, many fewer than four of his team-mates – all seamers. Often, because of his hard-to-pick googly, he has been regarded as the bloke who mops up the tail, which has helped his county’s rise to the top of division two but done little for his own education.

Instead, it is as a batsman that he has flourished, requesting a move to the top of the order and scoring five centuries – as many as his all his county colleagues put together. For one thing, this is a reminder of his talent; for another, of his drive, since not all young British-Asians have the confidence to promote themselves in a sport still digesting the sobering recommendations of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket.

So why do England pick him here, pick him there, but fail to give him an extended run anywhere? His age (21) can only be part of the answer: Shoaib Bashir, the off-spinner in whom the Test team have invested so much, is less than a year older, yet – unlike Ahmed – offers nothing with the bat and little in the field.

And, unlike Ahmed, he can’t turn the ball both ways, despite a frisson of excitement over the carrom ball he was working on before he broke a finger during the third Test against India at Lord’s.

The white-ball excellence of Rashid is another factor, though he is 37 now and can’t go on for ever. Might the two play in the same team, allowing the apprentice a close-up view of the master?

This question was put to Brook in Leeds on Monday. ‘I think he can get in pretty much anywhere,’ he replied. ‘He can bat in the top five, six, seven and he could even bat Nos 8, 9, whatever, but yeah, it’s a tough one, isn’t it, because Rash is so good and has got such exceptional skills as well.

‘But it’s just a matter of time for Rehan. He’s obviously got a long England career ahead of him. Every time he’s played, he’s done well, so yeah, trying to get him at some point, but we just can’t quite get him in at the minute.’

Fair enough, except that England missed a gold-plated chance to give Ahmed an outing during the six white-ball games against West Indies earlier in the summer, and there is a T20 World Cup coming up in India and Sri Lanka, where his skills ought to feel at home.

The Bazball era has been characterised by bold investment in talent and youth. Just not so much in the case of Rehan Ahmed.

A star is born  

Anyone lucky enough to have been at The Oval on Saturday will have watched the birth of a star: the 18-year-old Davina Perrin, who cracked 101 off 43 balls to take Northern Superchargers to an unassailable 214 for five in the Hundred eliminator against London Spirit. It was a brilliant innings that included power (there were five sixes) and placement (15 fours), and lit up a murky south London afternoon.

Even better, Perrin is a product of Ebony Rainford-Brent’s African-Caribbean Engagement programme. And while Perrin herself hails from Wolverhampton, which has never produced a male Test cricketer, the fact that she made her runs at The Oval, ACE’s spiritual home, added an extra layer of significance to her innings.

Say what you like about the Hundred – and many have – but it was hard to remain a cynic while Perrin’s family were jumping up and down in one of the boxes.

Sky Sports are occasionally accused of being cheerleaders for the Hundred, so it was refreshing to hear some constructive criticism from Nasser Hussain and Dinesh Karthik after Sunday’s final at Lord’s. 

Hussain felt that the men’s competition had yet to make the leap from just another franchise tournament, just another payday, in the way the women’s had. 

And Karthik thought the atmosphere had been flat, and suggested that the venues for both the eliminator and the final should involve home advantage for the teams finishing higher in the table. 

It made a change from constantly hearing that the Hundred is the best thing since sliced bread.

Jamie Overton, who played in England’s most recent Test, against India at The Oval, has decided to ‘focus’ on white-ball cricket, to protect his 31-year-old body. 

Franchise cricket has offered players a useful alternative to the grind of the first-class game, and some might argue an easy way out.