When it came to Test opening batsmen, Alex Lees was England’s next cab off the rank not so long ago. Others are now primed to pocket the fare.
The country’s young cricketer of the year as recently as 2014, he has dropped behind this season’s most likely winner of that accolade, Haseeb Hameed, plus perhaps one or two others in the jostle to pressure Alex Hales for the right to be Alastair Cook’s long-term partner. Here, he reminded those gathered at Headingley – not least the national selector, James Whitaker – of the credentials that led to him representing England Lions last February.
The lean months of 2015 appeared to be behind the angular left-hander as he overcame the seamer-friendly 10.30am start – and the loss of his sidekick Adam Lyth, to a cheap chop to gully, following an uncontested toss – to become the seventh top-flight batsman to 1,000 County Championship runs this season. “I was poor last year,” he confessed. “I averaged 33 and I have high standards for myself. I wasn’t happy with it but sometimes you have to have a backward step to find out more about yourself.”
Lees opted for the positive option as his default position and was clearly in the mood to exacerbate any Durham weakness – and there were a few to exploit. It was not plan A for their captain, Paul Collingwood, to be into the bowling attack within an hour. However, with Paul Coughlin left out before he burned out, on Collingwood came. It was with a view to getting the ball swinging. However, his first delivery, a half-tracker, was hauled over the ropes at deep midwicket by Lees.
By lunch, the 23-year-old’s alliance with Gary Ballance was worth three figures. Soon afterwards, the visitors were dealt another blow. Michael Richardson, whose championship debut on this very ground five years ago was because of Phil Mustard’s bout of gout, was back behind the stumps once more after Stuart Poynter complained of dizziness.
His stay lasted less than half a day’s play – as a dislocated finger forced him from the field and off for an x-ray to check there was no break. Collingwood, who warmed up as wicketkeeper for the Headingley Ashes Test of 2009 after Matt Prior suffered a back spasm, this time donned the gloves for real.
Just as he did when he deputised for Prior in a Test against West Indies at the Riverside in 2007, he pouched a catch – Barry McCarthy’s delivery of seam and bounce accounting for Ballance. Later, once Richardson’s 45-over hospital hiatus was over, the jack-of-all Collingwood picked up some further bowling slack, after the bursts of Graham Onions and Chris Rushworth with the second new ball.
That spell reaped the dismissal of the young Australian Jake Lehmann – who reached 58 without getting to 60 for the fifth time in six innings for the club – well taken low in the gully by Ryan Pringle, but nothing else, and left Yorkshire on course for maximum batting points. Andrew Gale’s team began this round of matches four points behind the leaders, Middlesex, in their quest to win a third consecutive title. With its destiny looking as if it will go down to the final round showdown between the two at Lord’s, every point counts.
Three of their batsmen were left to rue soft dismissals. Gale followed Lyth’s waft by being bowled round his legs and then came Lees’s demise. Having got to 84, and the magic 1,000 mark for the first time in his career, via a five – Jack Burnham’s shy at the non-striker’s end ricocheting to the boundary – Lees evened things up when he belted a full bunger from the off-spinner Pringle (six wickets at 73 apiece before this game) straight back at the bowler.
“I didn’t want to get out playing a half-hearted shot,” he said. In that, as was the case for the majority of his 132, he did not disappoint.
