‘And there, in that moment, I did think: oh no, what do I do here?’

It’s 9pm on a warm Thursday night in August and Jack Gabriel sits perched on his laptop, writing his latest match report. It is silent. There is no-one around. Jack is in a back room at the Leicestershire County Cricket Club ground, Grace Road, usually a hive of activity and bustle. Not tonight. It’s just Jack and the dappled light of his laptop, the only sound the frantic tipitty-tapping of his fingers on the keyboard as he finishes off his match report.

Work finally over, Jack stretches out his hands and yawns. It’s 9.25pm. That’ll do, he says. And he packs his laptop into his bag and heads to go head home. Except he can’t.

The gates are locked. He’s trapped. He’s been locked in. The groundsman who looks after the site has been, had a cursory look round, decided there was no-one there and locked up for the night.

“And there, in that moment, I did think: oh no, what do I do here?” Jack smiles, still amused by the memory. He envisaged pulling out some spare kit and sleeping in the dressing room. Thankfully, he found a number for the groundsman who managed to come back to the Grace Road ground – one of the oldest and picturesque grounds in English cricket – and set Jack free.

If you want to know what it’s like being the marketing and press officer for Leicestershire County Cricket Club, it’s right there, in that one anecdote, says Jack Gabriel, now 25.

Jack was a journalism student at DMU. He dreamed of a job in sports journalism but landing that ideal role was harder than he thought.

Back in July 2018, when cricket fan Jack graduated with a journalism degree from DMU he knew that he wanted to do sports journalism. He saw that there was an open position to write for Leicestershire CCC, he applied. He really wanted that job. But was left rejected and heartbroken.

“I was heartbroken when I didn’t get the job. I remember going through my email every day,” Jack explains.

“And when an email from them popped up and I saw the first line on the email, I was so heartbroken, the feeling of rejection, I still remember it.” Jack continues.

When Jack was doing journalism at university, he was nervous to get out there and gain experience. Those nerves set him back three years from a job that he really set his heart on. But it worked out rather great for Jack anyway. During those years Jack used the heartbreak of not getting the job he wanted as motivation to gain experience. He boosted his portfolio with community and local work, digital freelancing and FM Radio. He wrote for Lutterworth’s sport pages, Leicester Mercury and was published on LCFC´s website.

Jack sacrificed a lot during these years; long journeys, late nights, missing out on spending time with friends and Saturday outings because of FM radio.