Briefs intermission: Jacks happy to straddle England tours despite bag lag

T he last six months in the career of Will Jacks have been such a whirlwind even his own clothes have not been able to keep up. Half a year ago he had never played for England in any format; now he has played in every format, completing the set by making his ODI debut against Bangladesh on Wednesday, hours after being reunited with a lost suitcase and gratefully clambering into some fresh underwear.

A week ago Jacks was in New Zealand as part of the Test squad, but after missing out on the team for what would prove a dramatic concluding match in Wellington left for Dhaka. “I landed at midnight on the 25th but my bags didn’t arrive, and I didn’t get those until Tuesday morning, which made training quite hard,” he says. “I hit some underarms with Phil Salt’s gloves and Dawid Malan’s bat and I got some new training gear, but I had to wear the same underwear for two days, basically. I pretty much just sat on my bed in the same clothes for 48 hours, it was pretty depressing.”

It was a rare and pretty trivial setback in what has been a serene ascent. The 24-year-old played two T20s in Pakistan last September, returned there to play two Tests in December – taking a six-for on debut – and on Wednesday was the most economical of England’s spinners on his first ODI appearance (with one for 18 from five overs), and their second-highest run-scorer (with 26 from 31 balls). He has also squeezed in that New Zealand trip and seven appearances for Pretoria Capitals, the eventual beaten finalists in South Africa’s new SA20, for whom he was by a margin the most successful batter, with 270 runs and a high score of 92.

“It’s been my busiest winter by a long shot. I think I’ve had six days at home since the start of November, and that’s