“It was obviously completely random, and quite scary,” Jacks said. “I was very lucky to be looked after really well by the NHS [National Health Service] and it was brilliant. You’re just at the beck and call of the surgery – of how well it goes – and you don’t know the recovery [timeframe] until after you wake up.
“I was just fingers crossed going in, and luckily they were able to do just a slight incision, and not have to rip me open completely. Once that was all good, we were looking at a four-week timeline, and I think the first game was about three weeks and four days [away]. I did everything I could to get there, and probably played a little bit undercooked, but it’s all going well.”
Jacks had organised a few days away with his family after the Hundred to celebrate his mother’s 60th birthday. “We landed and went straight to the hospital,” he said. “It didn’t go how I planned for her, but we’ll have to find time to redo it.
“It was the night before [that] I started to feel unwell, but I just thought it was a tummy bug and then we ended up flying. Obviously it’s only an hour flight [from London] so I thought we’d do it, and I wanted to do the trip for her. But it was just really bad, really quickly, so we had to go.”
He was rushed to hospital – the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh – early in the afternoon and had surgery the following morning. He has three small scars on his stomach as a result, and said that he is having to compensate by warming up more thoroughly.
“It was more of a confidence thing,” he said. “I’ve lost a lot of my core strength. It helped that we were playing the T20s first, and I was only bowling a maximum of four overs. If I’m honest, I only bowled about five days before the first game, because I was building up my strength and trying to get some fitness back. Batting was easier to do first, and we left bowling to be the last thing.”
With the ball, he trapped both Charith Asalanka and Kusal Mendis – Sri Lanka’s vice-captain and captain – lbw while sweeping, and then ran through the tail. He took the final three wickets in the space of four balls, the last of them an offspinner’s dream delivery which turned sharply from wide outside off and through the gate to crash into Dilshan Madushanka’s off stump.
Jacks has gradually adapted to his new middle-order roles in both England’s T20I and 50-over teams since Brook took over as captain, and is becoming increasingly adaptable. Brook is close friends with Jacks and praised his attitude towards the unglamorous role that other players – such as Liam Livingstone – have been more reluctant to accept as their lot.
“He could have easily just moaned and groaned about batting in the middle-order and playing as an allrounder, but he’s really grown into that and he’s accepted that that’s going to be his role for a period of time and he’s been a very vital player,” Brook said. “He’s leading from the front with the bat, ball and in the field, and he’s buying into everything that we want to do.”
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at Cricinfo. @mroller98
