Student of the game Jack Haynes is hoping to go big
As baptisms of fire go, Jack Haynes’ first-class debut must be right up there.
It was three summers ago a then 18-year-old Haynes was handed his Worcestershire at New Road against an Australia attack containing Josh Hazelwood and Mitchell Starc.
“Looking back now, it was pretty cool,” he says. “At the time, it was a bit of a shock. It was about going out there and playing with as much adrenaline as you could ever imagine.
“There was no pressure to score runs. I was told to just go out and enjoy it and see what I could learn.”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the story is it wasn’t the first time Haynes had faced a senior international attack. His professional debut had actually come the previous year against the touring West Indians, when he was still in the first year of sixth form.
It says plenty about the regard Haynes has long been held at New Road and everything which has happened since suggests he is on course to fulfil some fairly lofty expectations.
Last season was a breakthrough, as he finished it the club’s third highest scorer in the County Championship behind Jake Libby and Ed Barnard and bagged his first century as a professional when he struck 153 in a Royal London Cup victory at Essex. This year, he wants more. “Last year wasn’t bad but it could have been better,” says Haynes. “There were a couple of games where I should have capitalised more and it is those things which, if I get right, will help me kick on again this season. We watched Jake do it all of last year, scoring more than 1,000 runs. I’ve been picking his brain and finding ways to flick the switch and go big.”
That last comment will raise smiles in a Worcestershire dressing room where Haynes has the reputation of being an unashamed cricket anorak. No-one at New Road is more excited by the signing of Azhar Ali, to the extent he jokes the Pakistan opener will probably be pre-warned what is coming his way.
Haynes conceded an obsession with cricket was probably inevitable. His dad Gavin played 100 first-class matches for Worcestershire and was part of the team which won the 1994 Natwest Trophy.
“It has always been about cricket,” says Haynes. “As long as I can remember I have been playing it. When I was two or three I would have a bat in my hand, with dad coaching me in the garden. “I do love the game and learning about the game, especially batting. The lads take the mickey out of me a little bit for being in the nets all the time. But that is always the way it has been growing up and it is nice to be able to do it for your job.”
