Meet Sam Wisniewski, the Yorkshire teenager off on a T10 adventure

NICK FRIEND: Wisniewski, 19, had never even played for Yorkshire's second team before 2020 and he only made his T20 Blast debut in September, but the left-arm wrist-spinner has bowled at England's batsmen as a warm-up act for Kuldeep Yadav

Among the list of global stars heading out to Abu Dhabi to take part in this year’s T10 competition, one particular name stands out.

A 19-year-old left-arm wrist-spinner only a handful of months on from his professional debut for Yorkshire, Sam Wisniewski will be a new face for the vast majority.

“It should be great,” he tells The Cricketer, speaking a couple of days after he was given the news. It is plenty to digest for a teenager whose rise is only in its embryonic phase; until 2020, he had never even played for his county at second team level. Had it not been for the pandemic, Wisniewski doubts whether he would have been handed his chance, but the circumstances of the last 12 months have accelerated his progress.

And now, with just a pair of T20 Blast games behind him, he is preparing to take his place in a tournament headlined by Chris Gayle, Shahid Afridi, Andre Russell and Nicholas Pooran.

“If you’d said this time last year that I’d have made my Yorkshire debut and then been selected in the T10, I wouldn’t have believed you,” says Wisniewski, as if even that is to understate the swelling of his reputation. This time three years ago, when the T10 League was first established, he was returning for pre-season training still on a high after winning the under-15 county cup.

“I’m just trying to enjoy it and take it all in,” he laughs. “There’s not a lot of expectation on me to do well – no one expects a 19-year-old kid to go over there and do well. It’s just an opportunity to go out there and try to learn off some other people.”

It was only at 14 when he began playing representative cricket for Yorkshire at all, and a year later still when he was first picked in the A team for his age-group. A season on, when several of his peers were handed academy contracts and scholarships, he missed out. Instead, he had to wait until turning 17 for his breakthrough. “I was always not really in the core group of main players growing up, so everything has happened quite quickly.”

^{Sam Wisniewski has spoken to Adil Rashid on several occasions for advice}

At such a pace, in fact, that he hasn’t afforded much thought to the challenges of bowling wrist-spin in a 10-over thrash at some of the world’s biggest hitters.

There is the calming knowledge that he will be joined in his Pune Devils squad by a friendly face in Yorkshire teammate Tom Kohler-Cadmore and a raw excitement in the juxtaposition of taking the skills he has honed in the Bradford Premier League to the global franchise circuit.

His team has Jonty Rhodes installed as head coach and Sri Lanka allrounder Thisara Perera as its icon player, as well as other stars in Mohammad Amir, Sam Billings, Hardus Viljoen and, most intriguingly, Ajantha Mendis – once upon a time the game’s most fascinating mystery spinner. He retired from all forms of cricket in 2019 but is making a return for this tournament, and Wisniewski cannot help but eye up a chance to pick the brains of a man who enjoyed his success with such a unique skillset.

“Mendis invented the carom-ball, I think it was,” he raves. “Just seeing how he thinks about the game and how he approaches it is something I’m looking forward to. I’ll be taking as much in as possible and putting it into practice at Yorkshire.

“All the expectation will be on the people I’ll be bowling against. I think it’s a win-win really. I’ll be expecting people to try to smack me out of the park, like they do to everyone.

“Obviously, the standard is very different but when I was 13 playing in my club’s second team, you get the same there – people trying to whack you from ball one, so I think you kind of learn how to cope. I think the big thing as well is that you have to accept that they’re going to hit you for six. Everyone is going to get hit for six – it’s just one of those things. But in a year’s time, I’ll be looking back on this experience and I’ll be thankful for it.”

The importance of club cricket in his development crops up regularly. His father, Ade, is a big supporter despite not having played much competitively himself; he is involved in the junior section at Broad Oak, where Wisniewski spent his childhood. “I think it has helped that he didn’t really play because he doesn’t really try to give me advice or things like that,” says Wisniewski Jr. “He lets me trust that I know what I’m doing and get on with it rather than trying to critique everything that I do!”

^{Wisniewski was picked to bowl at England's batsmen to warm them up for the threat of Kuldeep Yadav}

Nowadays, he represents Pudsey Congs in the senior sphere, picking up five wickets on his first team debut when he was 15.

“When you start well, you know that you can do it in that situation,” he says, looking back on his fast start as a boy in a man’s game – an attitude he took into his Blast bow against Lancashire. Ordinarily, a Roses clash might have been quite an environment in which to introduce a young wrist-spinner, then only 18. But the combination of empty stadia and Wisniewski’s own experiences made it a calculated gamble worth taking.

Two years earlier, as a 16-year-old, he travelled to Edgbaston to warm up England’s batsmen ahead of a Test series against India and, chiefly, the threat posed by Kuldeep Yadav. He has repeated the trick several times since, not least when the national side roll into Headingley. “Everyone’s dream is to play international cricket really,” he stresses. “They’ve all been great with me – answering questions and trying to help you.”

Among them was Joe Root, a teammate in both of his appearances for Yorkshire. If he makes his debut for Pune, it will be the first time in his fledgling career that he has not had England’s Test skipper by his side. “Root was speaking to me all the time and giving me bits of advice and just making me feel welcome,” he adds, reflecting on his Blast experience.

Unsurprisingly, Michael Yardy has the makings of a fine coach

“I’d been in the squad a couple of times before I played, so I’ve bowled against them and trained with them quite a bit. It wasn’t like I’d never done anything and all of a sudden I was playing. I had been around them quite a bit, so I think that helped me feel comfortable.

“And because I’d bowled a lot to the England lads, you do kind of know that you can do all right against that standard of player. So, I was pretty confident bowling at people like Liam Livingstone in the Blast.”

Wisniewski is aware of his point of difference and recognises its benefits. He first noticed it growing up when Brad Hogg was the only top-level exponent of an unusual, underutilised skill. In recent times, however, others have followed – not least Yadav, Sri Lanka’s Lakshan Sandakan and Afghanistan pair Noor Ahmad and Zahir Khan. The Big Bash, too, has seen an unlikely takeover: Clint Hinchcliffe, Liam Bowe, Jack Wood and D’Arcy Short all bowl wrist-spin with the less traditional arm.

Closer to home, he came up against Northamptonshire’s Freddie Heldreich for the first time last summer when the pair were involved in a Young Lions series organised for some of the most promising talents in the country. The previous year, Wisniewski faced Sussex youngster Tom Hinley, another left-armer, during the Super Fours, a national under-17 tournament. “It looks like it’s something that’s coming back into the game,” he suggests.

^{Jake Lintott had success in last year's T20 Blast for Birmingham Bears as a left-arm wrist-spinner}

And in last summer’s T20 Blast, Jake Lintott re-emerged in professional cricket for the first time since 2018, proving successful with Birmingham Bears.

He told The Cricketer in September that his professional hopes would have fallen away without his element of surprise. “I know that if I get in and do well, opportunities open up and things can move quite quickly,” said Lintott. “That’s why I’ve not closed the door. Ironically, I think if I was a left-arm spinner, I probably would have stopped. The fact that I’m a bit different drives me on a bit.”

In his current armoury, Wisniewski has his stock-ball, as well as a googly, top-spinner and slider. The flipper is a work in progress: “But I don’t think Warne got his until he was about 23, so it’s something I’m working on in the background.”

From as young as nine when he was learning to bowl, wrist-spin was always his destiny. “it just naturally came out the back of my hand,” he explains. The rest is history, aided by a deep-rooted obsession with watching those who have made it at the highest level.

“When I was 14 or 15, I watched YouTube videos of Adil Rashid, Adam Zampa and loads of people,” he says. “It has helped being at Yorkshire, speaking to Rashid. Josh Poysden has been really helpful as well, just speaking about leg-spin, preparation, what to do when batters are doing certain things and what to look out for. It has been really helpful. But literally, I’ll just watch any leg-spinners and take in as much as possible.

“I remember last year when Rashid was bowling to someone in the nets, I probably stood round the back of the net for about 25 minutes just watching him bowl and trying to take in as much as possible.”

"All the expectation will be on the people I'm bowling against; I'll be expecting them to try to smack me out of the park"

It is little surprise that England’s great white-ball leg-spinner has proven a useful guide; Wisniewski reckons the pair have spoken on “six or seven” occasions and “he has always given me as much advice as possible”.

It will all come in handy over the next fortnight as Pudsey Congs’ son of Huddersfield readies himself for the kind of opportunity that rarely comes the way of a barely tested youngster.

“I think one thing that has helped my progression is that I got told so many times that I was going to get hit for boundaries,” he says.

“It’s part and parcel. But it’s about how you come back from it. You see it so many times when batsmen hit sixes and the next ball is a wicket. You’re in the game all the time.”

Just 24 deliveries into his professional career, there is a wise head on those young shoulders.