Lewis looks back on great season start
After a busy winter with the England Lions, Lewis Gregory is reaping the rewards of the tour after taking the Specsavers County Championship by storm.
Lewis has picked up a league-leading 14 wickets at an average of just 10.36 and believes that his exposure to high quality cricket in the off-season and during Somerset’s pre-season tour of Abu Dhabi has helped him to hit the ground running in 2019.
Gregory was the leading wicket-taker in both one-day series against Pakistan and India, and he’s looking to continue his excellent form into Somerset’s Royal London One-Day Cup campaign which gets underway against Kent Spitfires today.
“I feel like the winter of playing against some strong opposition has put my game in a really good place,” he said. “India was a tough trip and I think the scoreline probably didn’t reflect how well we did or how close we came in a couple of games.
“We played against a really strong India A squad, with players who have played a lot of international cricket. Having that experience of playing against those high quality players on the surfaces you get out there was a real experience, not just for myself but for a lot of the guys.
“It has highlighted a few areas where I need to improve if I want to play international cricket. I’ve tried to work on that and hopefully we’ll see the results in the summer.”
Gregory skippered the Lions in white-ball cricket on their pre-Christmas tour of the UAE, where they faced Pakistan, and then acted as vice-captain to Sam Billings on the India tour in the new year.
His experience, combined with his captaincy roles, allowed him to become something of a mentor for the younger pros on the trip.
“We had a few guys who were pretty young and hadn’t played a huge amount of county cricket,” he said. “I just tried to be a sounding board for those guys if they had any different ideas that we could talk about.
“Hopefully they learned a little bit from the likes of myself, Sam Billings and Steven Mullaney. There was a huge amount of talent out there, and hopefully we’ll see those guys develop and improve over the next couple of years to push for higher honours.”
