Batsman Jack Leaning reflects on Kent’s 2023 season after completing his fourth season with the club

“I love it here,” enthused Jack Leaning as he reflects on life with Kent after completing his fourth season with the club. “If anything, if I had known it would be this good, I would have come years ago!”

A thick Yorkshire accent still remains.

But experienced batsman Leaning has become more and more of an integral figure in Kent’s first-team squad since he agreed to join in 2019 - so much so he plans to stay in England this winter, rather than return to Australia where he has regularly turned out for Sutherland in New South Wales.

He continued: “It’s been outstanding. It’s really brought the best out of me as a person and as a player.

“That’s credit to the dressing room, the staff and the club. They have allowed me to be the person I wanted to be, a person I felt was drifting a little bit when I left Yorkshire.

“I’m loving life down here. I’m settled, my fiancé [Ellie] is settled in work and having a good time.

“Hopefully, I’m here for plenty of years to come.”

Leaning spent much of the 2023 summer as Kent’s red-ball skipper.

Indeed, he had been one of the leading candidates to become the new Kent captain after Sam Billings quit as club captain at their end-of-season awards.

It’s a role Leaning admitted he was eager to take on permanently when asked at the end of their 2023 campaign but, with Kent instead naming Daniel Bell-Drummond as Billings’ successor, Leaning vowed: “If it’s somebody else and the club wants to go down a different route, I’ll be the first in line to do whatever is needed to help the person in charge out.”

While Kent didn’t build on white-ball successes in the previous two campaigns, failing to make the 50-over or T20 Blast knockout stages, they did just about avoid County Championship Division 1