Adil Rashid’s career could still take a turn after torrid debut for a leg-spinner

Though the temptation to cast judgment on Rashid after this innings will be great, it would be hasty, writes Osman Samiuddin.

England's Adil Rashid toiled hard but looked out-of-sorts on his debut at Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi. Jason O'Brien / Action Images. October 14, 2015.

ABU DHABI // Here, in the form of bald figures, is some consolation for Adil Rashid: 1 for 150; 3 for 105 and 0 for 65; 0 for 69 and 1 for 72; 1 for 82; 2 for 89 and 0 for 30.

Those are, in order, the debut figures of Shane Warne, Anil Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed, Abdul Qadir and Danish Kaneria, the most prominent members of the breed of which Rashid is a member.

All of them, sadly, are still better than the figures Rashid ended up with – 0 for 163 – which is the most runs conceded without a wicket by any bowler on debut.

That he topped – or bottomed – another leg-spinner for the record will probably be of no real consolation.

Bryce McGain’s debut Test, in which he bowled 18 wicketless overs for 149 runs, was also his last. Those figures, though, speak of several truths about leg-spinners. The first is that it is difficult to imagine a type of cricketer as fragile as a leg-spinner on debut, except maybe an opener.

It is an inherently difficult occupation, susceptible to all manner of little glitches throwing it off-kilter.

The other is that patience is absolutely key, both for the bowler and those charged with handling them. From the same avenues, they also require belief and oodles of it.

So though the temptation to cast judgment on Rashid after this innings will be great, it would be hasty. He was poor. He never quite got the length right, or rather, never adjusted to the attack Pakistan launched at him from the off.

More than any other kind of bowler in England’s attack, Pakistan knew instinctively that a leg-spinner on debut would be the one to target.

Off the last ball of his first over, on Tuesday, Mohammed Hafeez backed away into his crease and glided him through point for a boundary. In his next Hafeez skipped down the pitch and lofted him straight down the ground.

In between these two movements existed Rashid’s own little hell. Too easily cut, too easily hit straight down. And there was the pace, which is what observers fret most about when discussing his potential.

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Through the first innings his average pace was below 49mph. On surfaces that are slow anyway, that is perhaps a fraction too slow and a fraction is usually all it takes.

No bowler likes getting hit so the line that leg-spinners should not mind it has always been a little disingenuous. Nevertheless, they do require a thicker skin and though these things are hardly measurable, it is the quality Rashid will need most.

Maybe he has it but it often felt as if he was greeting the boundaries he was hit for with too much equanimity. Maybe he should have bristled a little more at the way Pakistan’s’ batsmen charged at him.

There is no right way of doing so (and doing it defeats the point: you have to be that way). Warne and Kumble, for example, exuded the same belligerence in very different ways.

But there was no arguing that that is what it was. And though Kaneria is Pakistan’s leading spinner in terms of wickets, he never dispelled the notion that he did not quite have – or develop – the self-belief for leg-spin. That, after all, is what made Qadir such a bowler.

All this will gain relevance much later though. Just for now, as important will be the way in which Alastair Cook handles him. He showed faith, if that is to be judged by his persistence in keeping him on for spells longer than was often necessary.

But it will have to go beyond. Cook cannot have led too many leg-spinners in his time and it is a skill that goes beyond the setting of fields.

Qadir has better figures under Javed Miandad’s captaincy, but he thought himself a superior bowler under Imran Khan, who had greater belief in him.

Warne wondered whether he would have survived had Allan Border not had “unshakeable faith” in him.

Indeed, Warne’s career hinged on one such act of faith, when Border brought him on with a Test slipping away in Colombo in 1992.

Warne could not believe he asked him to bowl, but he bowled a maiden, took three wickets in 13 balls and won the Test. And, well, you know the rest.

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