When Alex Lees was a youngster at Yorkshire, coach Jason Gillespie used to call him “Haydos”, a nod to his former Australia team-mate Matthew Hayden, one of the most dominant, powerful left-handed openers that cricket has ever seen.
At that stage, Lees seemed highly likely to fellow Yorkshire batters Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Gary Ballance and Adam Lyth in taking the step up to international honours. He was captaining the county at 22, scoring regular hundreds, with a method he describes as “one gear, which was attack attack, attack”.
