Cricketers are no longer a product of their immediate environment. Academies and scholarships to fee-paying schools are kicking that old adage out of the window.

In times past, if Geoffrey Boycott had attended Radley and Cambridge University, he might have batted as dazzlingly as Ted Dexter; and if Dexter had been brought up in a straitened mining community in Yorkshire, he would have defended his wicket for his life.

But now we see Harry Brook batting like no Yorkshire batsman has ever done before, scoring at one run a ball – not per over – in Test cricket. He spent only part of his upbringing at Burley-in-Wharfedale, in a valley between Leeds and Ilkley, where pitches probably did not resemble those in Perth WA; the rest of the time he was learning on belters at indoor schools and the Yorkshire academy.

Jack Leach, however, is still the product of his upbringing in club cricket in Taunton. From the age of 12 he was bowling against men as he recounts, and without very long boundaries. Some England followers sigh that he cannot float and flight the ball up outside off-stump, but if that was the way he had bowled he would have been clubbed like a seal. He had to push it through, to contain, and to hit if they missed.

Just as batsmen tinker with their techniques – not least, or indeed above all, Joe Root – spinners can make small adjustments but nothing radical. Leach is always going to be steady under fire, because that is how he grew up; and he has been adding little nips and tucks under the guidance of England’s spin bowling coach, Jeetan Patel, to the point where he is bowling better than ever, and where his record of 133 Test wickets at 34.02 each stands comparison with those of all England left-arm spinners of the last hundred years (with the exception of Derek Underwood, who was medium pace, and Johnny Wardle who was most successful when he switched to wrist-spin).

Seven wickets for 190 on that Multan pitch was not quite the equal of Jim Laker’s 19 for 90 on an Old Trafford Bunsen in 1956, but it is getting that way. Leach hung on in Pakistan’s first innings: 40 overs, three for 160. After England’s three seamers had done their valiant work, he brought those nips and tucks to bear – a little more bounce to get the top edge of Saud Shakeel, the old slider to trap Salman Agha, and a spot of turn to deceive the last two tailenders – to wrap up with four for 30.

His England and Somerset team-mate Shoaib Bashir was, meanwhile, outbowled. While Leach took seven wickets, Bashir took one for 156. It was much the same as their last game together for Somerset against Hampshire only a fortnight ago, when Leach took seven to Bashir’s none.

Every new spinner has novelty on his side but there is more to Bashir’s reducing effectiveness than the inevitability that he is losing his. It seems he was told to bowl the wrong line in Pakistan’s first innings in Multan: the advice given to him by Jeetan Patel was to push the ball through on off-stump and restrict the right-handed batsmen to the legside. Well, his figures spoke for themselves; Bashir’s one wicket was the left-hander Shakeel.

It is now adding up to a body of work: it is not just the one sample in Multan which suggests that Bashir is bowling the wrong line to right-handers. In the second innings of the second Test against West Indies at Trent Bridge he bowled beautifully – flighting the ball up on the line of fifth stump, dipping it down then threatening to beat both edges – and enjoyed his first five-wicket haul. Subsequently he has been pitching on off-stump, angling it in, and been picked off on the legside: his last nine Test wickets have cost 60 runs each and been taken at a rate of one every 100 balls.

When Ben Stokes backed Bashir to play 120 Tests, and identified him as England’s answer to Nathan Lyon next winter, he cannot have been envisualising him firing the ball in at the right-hander’s legs, the method which has proved fruitless for England off-spinners in Australia ever since pitches were covered. Bashir has to bowl the same sort of line as Lyon, outside off-stump, relying more on over-spin to get bounce than side-spin, if he is going to hold an end next winter and let England’s fast bowlers rest and rotate.

Patel, when he left New Zealand and played for Warwickshire, became the most effective off-spinner in championship cricket until Simon Harmer signed for Essex. Patel, not tall, kept a tight line on off-stump and tucked batsmen up; nobody was cutting loose balls outside off-stump. This method suited him and it worked for Warwickshire: all of 473 first-class wickets at 26 each. But it did not work in Tests: 65 wickets at 47 runs each for New Zealand. And this is the way Bashir’s record is heading – currently 33 wickets at 38 – if he does not insist on bowling the line which suits him and England best.