The label “resilient” has followed Jack Leach around. Generally, though, that has been due to off-field matters.
There has been his health; he has Crohn’s disease and was extremely ill with sepsis in New Zealand in 2019. He took a roundabout route to the top, pushing trolleys in Sainsbury’s aged
19, and had problems with his action in 2016. Even his appearance — bald, bespectacled — has contributed.
But on England’s bruising tour of Australia, Leach (right) experienced on-field adversity of a new kind. It was a tour that has cast a long shadow over English cricket and, from Leach’s perspective, “was everything international sport can throw at you”.
He is not wrong. He was informed of his selection for the First Test in Brisbane (at the expense of Stuart Broad) shortly before the toss, with no meaningful prep, having not played a Test match since March, and with just four first-class matches in the six months prior (and none in the last two).
England’s batting malfunctioned, exposing him to Australia’s aggressive, in-form left-handers. On the ropes, he could summon no response.
On a helpful surface in Adelaide, he was dropped. In Melbourne and Sydney, he built himself back up, before missing out in Hobart, where even Nathan Lyon did not get a bowl.
He finished with a disappointing six wickets at 53.5 (his overall Test numbers still respectable: 68 at 32), having not bowled in a fourth innings. The sense was that he was the England player managed worst: playing in the wrong games, bowling to fields either too attacking or too defensive. That was as true before the Ashes as in Australia.
“I found Brisbane really, really difficult,” he reflects. “That was not a nice experience. But I felt I came back and got into the series.
“I hadn’t had much cricket coming in, and rain was not great for our preparation. But I look at what I can control, how the ball comes out of my hand, and that could have been better. What I produce needed to be better for international cricket.”
Today, England were leaving for the next assignment on their brutal schedule: three Tests in the Caribbean. Leach, even after all he has been through, could barely sound more upbeat. Having relocated his “purpose” and barely taken any time off, he is “enjoying cricket more than I have for a while”.
With time to kill in Hobart, he began picking himself off the canvas, working with spin coach Jeetan Patel. Shortly after they returned to England, Patel was coming down to Taunton for long sessions. Leach spent a few days in Finland with his girlfriend, Lucy, who he had not seen for three months, but otherwise it has been nose to the grindstone; a thorough examination of how he can improve.
“It was a tough tour for me individually and for the team,” he says. “It might be hard to believe, but I already feel it was a really valuable experience.
“I knew how to deal with the off-field stuff, but cricket is different. I always thought I’d struggle with that, but now I’ve experienced it I’ve surprised myself. I’ve come away feeling so motivated.”
Leach and Patel have worked on “the fundamentals” of his craft. This centred on “getting more on the ball”, and has mainly involved “standing drills” with no momentum. “I found the first couple of sessions very difficult,” he says. “But very quickly started to see the pay-off.”
But there has been so much besides. There is fielding and especially his batting — an area of the game he “loves” and which has produced some of his most memorable moments, with innings both big and small.
His team-mates have nicknamed him “Tres”, in honour of his former Somerset team-mate Marcus Trescothick, who will be in the Caribbean as batting coach.
“I’m not sure how he feels about that nickname,” smiles Leach. “I work hard on my batting, but never at the expense of my bowling. I want to be a spinner who bowls teams out, that is my job. However, I know that if I can add being able to bat even one place up the order can keep you in the team when selection is tight.”
More important has been a change in attitude more broadly.
“Nutrition, strength and conditioning, using the sports psych,” says Leach. “Experiences like Brisbane make you realise how mental the game is; looking at the analyst’s stuff, being more open to that.
“Before I thought, ‘Well, if I get myself right then it’ll be okay’. But maybe that neglects looking into detail at what you are going to come up against. I’ve maybe been guilty of trying to ‘feel good’. Actually, perhaps that’s dangerous. Being prepared and ready for anything is more than that. It’s been a realisation that you are not going to play cricket forever. I want to reach my ceiling as a player and offer everything I can to the team I play in.”
Leach was nervous about selection for the tour of the West Indies. But he has been backed by the interim management and was travelling to Antigua today not only as the expected first-choice spinner, but a senior player for the first time.
“It was probably the most buzzing I’ve been for a while in terms of a selection,” he says. “I was really keen to go because, through all this hard work, I’m enjoying cricket more than I have for a while.
“Through Covid, opportunities to play has been my big challenge. You can lose a bit of purpose, maybe about what you are offering to the world. Even though Australia didn’t go to plan, to get more chance to build on what I’ve learnt, both good and bad, keep playing cricket, then straight into a season at home, I feel like I am a cricketer again and I’m playing the game!
“A struggle for me has always been to really believe in myself, and this has given me a bit more belief. For Rooty (skipper Joe Root) and others to back me now, I want to repay that faith. It’s exciting. In Australia, people saw the worst of me, so I feel I have nothing to lose.”
As ever with Leach, the challenge is faced head on.
