It was during a game of cricket in the back garden of his parents’ home in Chepstow that Ben Kellaway discovered the unique talent that made him the first four-dimensional player in English cricket.
Kellaway, 20, and his brother James, two years younger, were “quite resourceful” in their attempts to gain the upper hand in the sibling battle.
“We hung out in the back garden the whole time during Covid, we never got bored of playing and I just threw everything at him,” recalled Glamorgan all-rounder Kellaway. “We used hoops and hitting nets and tried to make a formation that was different.”
The challenge: hitting unusual target areas while batting. Oh, and throwing the ball with both hands while bowling — which for Ben meant switching from his normal off-spin to slow lefties and back again.
‘After that summer I put it on hold for a while and then spent the next few winters fiddling around in the nets with a few lads,’ he told Mail Sport. ‘It wasn’t until last year when our new coach Grant Bradburn came in and I showed it to him that he thought, “Wow, you really need to get into that.”‘
Ben Kellaway has built a growing reputation for his ability to throw with both arms
He said he first developed the skill while practicing in the garden with his brother
Events in recent weeks suggest it was worth taking seriously. Late last month, Kellaway became the first man to claim wickets with either arm in a county innings since 1980, when Kent Sussex’s Charles Rowe dismissed tailender Chris Waller with the only left-arm orthodox delivery of his career, having earlier bowled Geoff Arnold.
Rowe was ambidextrous. Kellaway was not. “That’s the weird thing,” he says. “I can’t do anything else with my left hand. I’ve tried throwing, for example. Useless.
‘At the beginning of the season, the connective tissue in my right hand tore and everything was taped up, but even something as simple as eating with a fork in my left hand was not going well at all.’
However, after extensive testing in second XI cricket – Ahmed Syed, a former schoolmate, was the first victim of his left-handed spin in a Twenty20 match against Gloucestershire – Kellaway was given the go-ahead by Glamorgan captain Kiran Carlson to vary the attacking line during his second over of a 50-over cup match against Surrey.
It is increasingly common for bowlers to alternate between off-spin and leg-spin, depending on the left- or right-handedness of their opponents — the English duo of Liam Livingstone and Joe Root are great practitioners. However, it is an undeniably rare talent to alternate between right-arm over and left-arm round in the professional game.
Jimmy Anderson and his former England teammate Jofra Archer are both experts at imitating their left-handed throwers, but putting your second action under pressure during a match is a different challenge altogether.
That’s why, apart from Rowe’s party trick 44 years ago, there are few examples of it being tried at county level. Amir Khan, 18, did just that for Warwickshire’s second XI this summer.
Kellaway has been encouraged by Glamorgan head coach Grant Bradburn to continue developing his unique approach
Jimmy Anderson is known for using his weaker arm in the net to prepare teammates for left-handed bowlers
Kellaway had claimed his first 15 senior wickets with off-breaks, but Conor McKerr became his historic 16th at the Oval, bowled by an arm ball, before returning to right-arm around the wicket to catch Matt Dunn lbw in his next over. He repeated the trick against Sussex last week, with Danial Ibrahim caught at slip with a left-armer.
New Zealander Bradburn had encouraged Kellaway to use left and right shots during the One-Day Cup.
Kellaway continues: ‘The first time I let him (Bradburn) play, he was all in. He was trying to move the game forward with the attitude of, ‘You’ve got nothing to lose, just give it a try.’
“I thought if I start now instead of waiting a few years, it could be big in the future. It’s going in the right direction. Although there’s still a lot of work to do, the feedback from other people has given me the confidence to really push it forward.”
Kellaway — also a scoring No. 6 with three fifties to his name in seven 50-over innings — believes bowling mirror-image finger spin makes the doubling process significantly easier than if he had tried wrist spin, swing or seam.
“It’s the same grip with different hands, and that grip was something that came naturally,” he says.
‘I’m just trying to replicate the spin on the ball with the other hand and test my ability to do that in all conditions. I’ve tried to do it with the wet ball, things like that, because there’s a lot of factors that can go wrong, but at the moment it’s coming out pretty good.’
Last winter Kellaway worked under Mark O’Leary at Cardiff, but with Glamorgan without a spin bowling coach, the question of how best to develop this unique talent may well be answered across the border by those at the ECB.
With such a rare talent at his disposal, Kellaway’s development is one to watch.
‘This year it was “Just bowl”. At the moment it’s still the right arm that’s dominant, but hopefully it gets to the point where both feel equal. Cricket can be tricky, especially when you’re just a batter or a bowler, so I try to get myself into the game as much as possible.’
The cricketer who can bat aggressively, field fluidly and employ two different bowling styles may have discovered the prototype that then Australian coach John Buchanan put forward after the 2001 Ashes when asked how his all-conquering team could improve.
Ben Kellaway is a name to remember.