It is the eighth over of South Africa’s first innings in Gqeberha in January 2020 when Joe Root tosses the ball to 22-year-old Dom Bess. Three overs later, the decision pays off.

With the final ball before drinks, Bess takes a return catch to dismiss Pieter Malan. In the final over before the close, he has Zubayr Hamza caught at short leg. The next morning, Bess removes Dean Elgar, Faf du Plessis and Rassie van der Dussen to become the first English spinner to take the first five wickets of an innings since Derek Underwood in 1975.

It was an improbable breakthrough. Bess had not even been in England’s original touring party, arriving after Jack Leach, his Somerset teammate and close friend, fell ill. The previous summer he had struggled for opportunities and gone on loan to Yorkshire. Now he had a Test five-fer and seemingly a place in England’s side.

For a while, at least. Bess played another 11 Tests, took another five-wicket haul in Galle and collected 36 wickets at 33.97. His final Test came against India in Ahmedabad in March 2021. He was 23.

England return to South Africa this winter for three Tests and there is no guarantee they will take a frontline spinner. The recent innings victory against Pakistan was secured with seamers taking all 20 wickets. Tougher challenges await, but there is a growing argument that an extra batter who can turn his arm offers better balance to the side.

Bess is unconvinced. “There’s a real difference between filling a gap and properly holding an end up, building pressure and getting wickets,” he says, now 29 and entering, as he sees it, “the prime” of his career. “I think the public and the media don’t realise how big the gap is between genuine spinners and part-timers.”

It is a familiar bind. “You’re sort of the first one to be dropped when they need rotation,” Bess says. “But then when you go to subcontinent conditions, you’re the first two or one to get the job done when it’s needed. There’s very little security there.”

Maybe this says something about the English psyche. Spin requires deception which, perhaps as a hangover from an imperial past, is regarded as faintly ungentlemanly. Or perhaps a culture that values hard work has never trusted a method that can look suspiciously effortless. These are ridiculous theories, of course, but there has to be something more than pitches and scheduling behind English cricket’s perennial ambivalence towards spin.

English spinners have often been treated as curiosities. Monty Panesar became as famous for his disastrous Celebrity Mastermind appearance and urinating on a nightclub bouncer as for his 167 Test wickets. Leach became a cult hero for one run at Headingley and joked that supporters warmed to him because he looked like a village cricketer. Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid have carried a different burden, their faith and British-Asian identities drawing them into conversations about Englishness their white teammates rarely had to navigate. Perhaps the English spinner has never been allowed to be just a bowler.

The problem is at least partly structural. In 2022, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s high-performance review found that just 22% of deliveries in English domestic first-class cricket since 2014 had been bowled by spinners, the lowest proportion of any major cricket nation. Its conclusion was blunt: “Spinners have limited opportunity to develop in the domestic game.”

The Kookaburra ball was introduced into rounds of the County Championship partly to encourage skills marginalised by the more seam-friendly Dukes. Yet counties are asked to develop Test spinners while spending large parts of the season in conditions where they are peripheral.

Bess knows that contradiction. He and Leach emerged at Somerset, one of the few counties prepared to build games around spin, only for the club to receive a 12-point deduction after the pitch used for the 2019 title decider against Essex was judged poor for offering excessive turn.

He describes a merry-go-round in which English cricket identifies a young spinner, backs him, then searches for the next before he has fully developed his trade. Since Graeme Swann retired in 2013 with 255 Test wickets, Ali, Rashid, Leach, Bess and now Shoaib Bashir have all, among others, been presented as the answer.

“Even though I never felt fully settled I did think I’d get a longer run,” Bess says. “At least I hoped I would. But I turned 23 and they wanted someone else. The cycle repeats. It can feel like a bit of a grind. All you can do is do your work and get wickets for your county. But I’m happy with where my game is going.”

There is an irony in English cricket’s obsession with youth. Spin is the sport’s slow-burning craft. Bess talks about only now understanding how to alter his pace for a surface, how to entice a batter and how to “stack numbers” in his favour over a long spell.

“People forget that Swanny only got into the Test side at 29,” Bess says. “Then he played for five or six years in one of the most successful teams we’ve ever produced.”

Bess is 29 now and relishing the prospect of five weeks on dry County Championship pitches. Last week both he and Leach bagged five-fers in victories for Yorkshire and Somerset respectively. A few more of those and the narrative may turn once more.

“You’d like to be thinking that some important people are watching,” Bess says. Six years after Gqeberha, perhaps they still are.

Black Caps handed extra motivation

The race for a spot in the World Test Championship final next year is hotting up. Too bad England are not really in the mix. While Joe Root’s side languish seventh after five wins from 14 Tests, Australia lead the standings on 80%, followed by the defending champions South Africa on 75% and the inaugural winners, New Zealand, on 72.22%. Bangladesh and India, on 55.56% and 53.33% respectively, retain hopes of gatecrashing the party.

Bangladesh’s historic victory in Darwin briefly blew the race wide open before Australia responded with an innings win in Mackay. It nevertheless left the Bangladesh chief selector, Habibul Bashar, bullish about their chances, with home series against West Indies and England still to come before a trip to South Africa. India, meanwhile, have revived a faltering campaign with a thumping victory in Galle and still have Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Australia to negotiate.

But the most intriguing collision comes in Australia, where New Zealand play four Tests across December and January. The Black Caps have won one Test series there. Doing so again could propel them towards the final of a competition they won in 2021.

South Africa are similarly well placed to defend the mace they won last year. Having already claimed a remarkable 2-0 series victory in India, they sit second and will host Australia, Bangladesh and England before finishing their campaign in Sri Lanka.

Which brings us back to England: 14 Tests played, eight lost and 14 points surrendered to slow over-rates. Even victory against Pakistan has left them stranded on 29.76%.

For all its flaws, the WTC has given bilateral Test cricket some much-needed context. Imagine how much more compelling the race would be if England occasionally behaved as though they wanted to win it. Maybe, with more pragmatic hands at the wheel compared to the previous regime, England might discover that taking the competition seriously can be good fun too.

• This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.