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“I’m immensely proud”: Lewis looks back on 2024 – Part 1
The summer of 2024 was one of what might have been for Somerset County Cricket Club.
Despite the disappointment of missing out on all three trophies in the final stages of the season, Lewis Gregory believes that the team deserve credit for their performances.
We caught up with Lewis recently to look back on his first year as Club Captain.
“It was a good season, but in the end it was a frustrating one,” he reflected. “We all sat down at the start of the season, and we set ourselves the goal of being in a position to win trophies come September. We achieved that because we were in the hunt in all three competitions. Unfortunately, the last few weeks didn’t go the way that we’d hoped but I’m immensely proud of the lads and the brand of cricket that we played. It was a good summer, and we certainly did a lot of things right, but it was frustrating to come away with no silverware.
“There’s a lot of teams who would have loved to have been challenging across all three formats and the reality is that it’s incredibly hard to win a trophy, so to have been there or thereabouts in all three is a pretty special achievement.”
What does Lewis put this relative success down to?
“We’ve tried to create a free-spirited environment within the dressing room,” he explained. “We want to give players the ownership to go out there and play how they want to play. We want to get the best out of people and get them in the best frame of mind. We’ve got a talented squad, and we want to be putting them in the best space to be able to go out there and show what they can do.
“We want to be playing a brand of cricket that the guys want to be playing. We don’t want to push people down a route that they’re not comfortable with. It’s about giving people the confidence to be free-spirited and to allow them to go out and play in the way that they feel will enable them to perform. It allows people to have a bit more self-ownership when it comes to prep and how they go about their business.
“Ultimately, sport is a performance industry, and we therefore need an environment which enables the players to do that. Some people want to be positive from the off, others go about things a bit differently and I think that has blended and gelled pretty nicely throughout the squad. Hopefully, there’s a lot more to come and we’ll be challenging on all fronts again next year.”
How does Lewis feel that he fared in his first year as Club Captain?
“I’d like to think that I’ve got a pretty good cricket brain and that I can influence games with that, but as an individual you’re always looking to improve. I would have liked to have taken more wickets and scored more runs, but I think every player will say that. I want to be contributing throughout the season to winning games of cricket and being part of a successful team. At this stage of my career I want to be winning trophies and sharing those moments with the guys in the dressing room and hopefully we can do that over the next few years.
“Obviously, there’s a lot more time to think about things in red-ball cricket and things can play on your mind a lot more, but equally there’s a lot more opportunity to be able to affect games. I’ve really enjoyed it. In fact, I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would!”
Part two of Lewis Looks Back on 2024 will appear on this website next week.
