Kent’s County Championship campaign begins on Thursday at Chelmsford and with the skipper away in India, we’ve been talking to the red ball vice-captain Jack Leaning.
“There’s a lot of excitement ahead of the start,” Jack told us as we caught up with him for an exclusive interview this week. “There’s always a few nerves at the start of every season but I think that’s a good thing really! It shows that you’re quite passionate about what’s ahead and I see it as excitement rather than any negativity.”
Reflecting on his move from Yorkshire, he conceded, “It’s been a good move for me – it worked well for me – and I’ve loved every minute of it. I can’t fault the dressing room – it’s fantastic; the coaching staff have given me everything to facilitate my game and luckily, I’ve played well, and things have really come together for me.”
“I guess I was ready for a bit of a change in my career – things got a little bit stale for me at Yorkshire and coming down to Canterbury has really rejuvenated my career across all formats of the game and hopefully that upward curve will continue in the next few years.”
Coach Matt Walker recently named Jack as the red-ball vice-captain for this season; “it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but there wasn’t an opportunity at Yorkshire given the senior squad that we had there for the majority of my time, which is fair enough.”
“But I think that I’ve fitted into the dressing room really well down here – I feel I’ve earned the respect of the lads and the club and hopefully on the field too, and hopefully that will show in the next five or six weeks until Sam gets back from India and hopefully, we’ll get a good start.”
“We’ve spoken a lot – we’ve had plenty of conversations over Facetime and Zoom – and I think that we’ve both got a lot of similarities in the way that we think about the game and the squad moving forward.”
“And I think that we’ve got an outstanding squad this year as I don’t think there’s any base that we haven’t got covered! We showed what we’re capable of in Championship cricket at the end of last summer which built on the two years before I was here.”
“With the additions that we’ve made for 2022 – Jackson Bird, George Linde – we’ve covered bases… Jackson really strengthens the bowling unit that already did quite well last season, and George will give us that little bit of seniority in the spin department that is notoriously tough for young spinners in England – hopefully it’ll give our young spinners the chance to really learn off him, and hopefully push their cause to play alongside him.”
One member of the squad who will need no introduction is the enigma that is Darren Stevens as the 45-year-old begins his 26th season of County cricket. “We get on really well away from cricket” Jack told us. “And I think it’s the same on the field as well. He is an outstanding talent, and I don’t think that there’s a positive word that hasn’t been used to describe Darren really!”
“You go and set him a challenge and he goes and exceeds expectations every single time. He’s probably in the latter stages of his career, but stats wise, if you covered up his age, he’d undoubtedly be talked about as an England player. He really is a fantastic bloke and really helped me settle in on and off the field in Kent.”
Unfortunately for Leaning, a hamstring injury rules him out of the season opener in Chelmsford, but he has travelled with the squad and is hoping to be fit in time to face Lancashire at Canterbury next week.