Matt Parkinson

A chirpy legspinner from Bolton outside of Manchester, Matt Parkinson bowls slowly and tosses the ball up above the eyeline, relying on prodigious natural turn and drift rather than pace and variations to take his wickets.

Parkinson was the most prolific white-ball wicket-taker in England for two seasons, earned a national-team call-up for the 2019-20 tour of New Zealand, where he made his T20I debut, taking five wickets in six overs across two games, and played his first Test at Lord's in the summer of 2022 against the same team after Jack Leach went down with a concussion. He then struggled against India in a pair of T20Is and slipped down the pecking order as the year wore on. He spent the 2022-23 winter at home, working on his action, then travelled to Zimbabwe to play first-class and T20 cricket for Mashonaland Eagles.

Parkinson became the youngest Lancashire player to take five wickets on debut, in 2016 as a 19-year-old, but it was in white-ball cricket that he grew to prominence. He won an ECB overseas placement with Gordon, the New South Wales club side, for 2016-17, and spent time working with Stuart MacGill while in Australia.

England Lions recognition soon followed, and he was the leading spinner in both limited-overs competitions in 2018. He took 21 Blast wickets in 2019, sending Lancashire through to the quarter-finals, and while Championship opportunities were limited, he impressed enough to earn an England call-up for the New Zealand series. The tour to South Africa that followed was less successful, where his (lack of) pace came under scrutiny, and he was leapfrogged by Dom Bess in the Test reckoning.

After an ankle injury sidelined him in 2020, he carried drinks through the subcontinent tour in early 2021. In the first month of the Championship season later in the year, he bowled a ball-of-the-century contender that pitched outside leg and pegged back Adam Rossington's off stump in a match against Northamptonshire.