By Guy Williams, The Cricket Paper
Yorkshire’s left-handed opening bat, Alex Lees, 24, knows full well how Alastair Cook was feeling prior to his record-breaking double century.
The former England captain, like Lees a left-hander, had struggled to score against the pace of Australia’s fast bowlers in the first three Ashes Test matches, just as the Yorkshire opener failed last season to fulfil his undoubted talent for the first time since his Championship debut in 2013.
During a campaign, which Lees and Yorkshire collectively are keen to forget, he scored only 531 runs in 14 Championship appearances and hit just one century and two 50s, a mediocre return compared with more than 900 and almost 800 runs in the Championship winning years of 2014 and 2015, and more than 1,000 in 2016 when Lees struck three centuries and averaged 40.17.
