Jack Taylor 2.0: The reinvention of Gloucestershire's T20 skipper

NICK FRIEND: Taylor was an off-spinner in a former guise but his career has enjoyed a dramatic shift in a terrific, close-knit team

Jack Taylor is an intriguing cricketer. Gloucestershire’s T20 captain was tasked at the start of the season with replacing Michael Klinger in the role – not quite a poisoned chalice but a substantial act to follow, given the impact of the Australian on all involved at Bristol.

By early October, he was leading his side out at Edgbaston in the county’s first Finals Day appearance since 2007.

Yet when he had made his Gloucestershire debut in 2010, it was in the guise of an off-spinner. A decade on, he has reinvented himself as a middle order batsman and specialist finisher in white-ball cricket, while also working to develop his part-time leg-breaks.

Much of that transition has been forced on the 28-year-old, having seen the legality of his bowling action questioned through much of his early career.

He was suspended from bowling during the 2018 season after a third ban was issued at the end of the 2017 campaign, following similar issues in 2013 and 2016.

“It was one of those things,” he says. “I haven’t bowled off-spin for a few years now, which was basically down to the fact that I got banned three times for something I felt like I couldn’t necessarily control.

“My action felt completely natural to me and I did hours of work trying to rectify that, but it just wasn’t something that I was able to do. It got to a point where I completely lost any enjoyment.

“I remember bowling in a four-day game down at Hove and I knew that one of the umpires had previously reported me a couple of times before. We were a bowler down that innings through injury and I was basically plugged in from one end, getting more and more tired.

“I knew that my action generally looked slightly worse as I got more tired. I wasn’t actually focusing on where I was bowling the ball. I was just worried about what the umpires and other people were thinking. That was the point where I was like: ‘I can’t go through this anymore.’

“I was lucky enough to be scoring a lot of runs, so I was warranting my place in the team as a batsman, and then my batting had to take over.”

^{Taylor took over as Gloucestershire's T20 captain at the start of the season}

His leg-spin is closing in on match-ready status, delayed over the summer by the lack of club cricket and 2nd XI games in which to unfurl it. In order to crack the franchise world as a middle order finisher, Taylor is keen to add a second string to his bow. “I’ve still got bigger ambitions,” he insists.

The stigma associated with breaching the 15-degree limit is a difficult place from which to recover. He recalls subconsciously feeling as though he was always being watched.

“I think once you get labelled as a chucker and you know it’s out there, I felt like people were looking for it,” he explains. “I guess another frustration was seeing a lot of guys around the world getting away with potentially borderline actions. When it first happened, I was quite bitter and down about it, but I’ve grown up and moved on.”

And so, there is a significant amount of pride in the journey since, culminating in being asked to lead a fine Gloucestershire team.

For a long time, Richard Dawson’s men operated firmly beneath the radar, dismissed by several observers because of a lack of star names.

But quietly, they have built an excellent unit, full of players comfortable in their roles. Red-ball captain Chris Dent hadn’t played a Blast game for four years until this season, but emerged as a revelation through the powerplay; Miles Hammond – like Taylor – began life as an off-spinner, before a battle with the yips saw him re-emerge as an aggressive opener. At 33 years of age, Ian Cockbain's tournament haul of 399 runs was bettered only by three players. 

In Benny Howell lies one of the circuit’s cleverest bowlers, redefining the traditional constraints of medium-pace with an array of unusual variations. Ryan Higgins, since swapping Middlesex for Gloucestershire, has become one of county cricket’s best all-round performers.

With the ball, David Payne is one of three men under the age of 30 with 100 Blast wickets, while Tom Smith was the 2020 competition’s leading wicket-taker prior to Finals Day.

“I don’t think we can be seen as underdogs anymore,” says Taylor. “If you look down our team manfor-man on paper, we might not have the household names that played international cricket, but I would take our team over a lot of other teams.”

Higgins, Howell and Payne were picked up in last year’s draft for The Hundred – from which Taylor was an unfortunate, surprising omission, while James Bracey spent much of his summer in England’s Test bubble. And then, there is Dawson – a highly rated head coach, seconded for England duty for much of the season, having led the Lions to a landmark victory in Australia over the winter.

^{A tough act to follow, Michael Klinger has legendary status at the club}

Prior to their semi-final defeat against Surrey, Gloucestershire had won eight Blast matches out of nine, including a brutal nine-wicket demolition of Northamptonshire in their quarter-final clash – a game that put to bed any lingering ghosts of three knockout defeats in the previous four years.

“I think that was the frustration of Finals Day,” he adds. “How clinical we’d been throughout the competition, to not back that up was a disappointment. But I talked a lot to the guys after the game; we’re not just satisfied with getting to Finals Day. We’ve got a great core and I’m confident that we can win it in the next few years.”

At the centre of that core is, as Taylor describes, “a close-knit group” bound together by adversity. Smith’s wife, Laura, passed away in 2018; assistant coach Ian Harvey also lost his wife, Amanda, in the same year; Gareth Roderick, who left for Worcestershire at the end of the season after eight seasons at Bristol, lost his father to suicide in 2017; Klinger’s wife, Cindy, has battled breast cancer.

“Individuals in the group have had some pretty horrific things happen to them,” Taylor reflects. “We have gone through it as a big family, trying to help in any which way we can.”

It has forged an exceptional collective; ahead of Edgbaston, Smith said the extent of shared tragedy had made for an “extremely emotionally intelligent” squad.

“I guess we don’t have many big egos either,” Taylor adds. “You take someone like Michael Klinger – he was probably one of the best overseas players in England for a period of time and I’m sure he would have had plenty of opportunities to move elsewhere in England but he loved the environment. I think that’s testament to the club and what we’ve created in the dressing room.

“The fact that people just want to come back – we were supposed to have Andrew Tye back for the T20s this year before Covid came along. Again, I’m sure he’s not short on offers, but he loves the group. I think that’s a feather in our cap.”

And as captain – of the T20 side at least – Taylor has an opportunity to write the next chapter.

^{Taylor is sponsored by Woodstock Cricket}

“I was honoured to be asked,” he says. “If we can add next year in terms of overseas players, that can only make us stronger. But the nice thing is that I don’t feel we have to rely on them to do that as well.

“I think there’s been that perception in the past that we relied a lot on ‘Maxy’ [Klinger] – he played a huge role for the club over the years.

“We’ve got a lot of guys chipping in now, and we’re not youngsters anymore, which we probably hid behind for a bit. We’ve got a lot of guys who’ve played a lot of T20 cricket and are good. I wouldn’t change any of our personnel.”

The same is true of the longer format; Gloucestershire arrived in 2020 ready for a first tilt at the County Championship’s top tier since 2005, with Cheteshwar Pujara signed to beef up their top order and Jerome Taylor brought in to add pace to a skilful bowling attack.

Circumstances, of course, mean that the wait goes on.

“I think the Bob Willis Trophy this year was great,” Taylor stresses. “But with us being out of Division One for so long, to not have a crack at it would take the tint off it a little bit, I guess.

“Our achievement was amazing, but I think we’d all like the opportunity to play in a two-tiered divisional system.

“That’s obviously going to be out of our hands, but we’ve got a good red-ball team together and we want to have a crack at playing the best teams every week.”

This article was written in association with Woodstock Cricket. For more information about equipment or sponsorship visit www.woodstockcricket.co.uk