Lee was a Londoner and played one match in 1923 for Middlesex, where his brother, Harry, 12 years his senior, was an opening batsman and off-break bowler from 1911 to 1934.
The Middlesex match was against Somerset at Taunton, and Lee failed to take a wicket with his leg-breaks and, batting at number ten, was run out without scoring.
[1] Unable to win a place in the Middlesex side, he moved to Somerset from the 1925 season, starting his career with his new county in almost identical circumstances, with just one wicket for his bowling and two scoreless innings in the match against Cambridge University at Bath.
[4] He also took 41 wickets, including five for 23 in an innings in the match against Warwickshire when, in Wisden's report, "he bowled an excellent length and with some variety of pace made the ball turn quickly".
[5][6] In its review of Somerset's season, Wisden added that Lee had made "an encouraging start" and "may develop into a thoroughly good all-round player".
From early in the season, Lee was promoted to open the innings or to bat at number three, and though the move was not an instant success, it paid off from June.
[12] And then at the end of the same month of June 1931, opening the innings alongside his brother Frank, he made 113, his first century, in the game against Northamptonshire at Northampton.
[18] The 1934 season was Lee's most successful in first-class cricket in terms of runs scored, batting average and wickets taken.
It cannot be said that they were, as a rule, attractive to watch, but extra care could be excused in view of the knowledge that failure on their part probably—and usually—meant the cheap dismissal of the side.
[5] In Harold Gimblett's sensational debut match at Frome in May 1935, Lee was Somerset's most successful bowler, taking nine Essex wickets to win the game.
[23] After the 1935 season Lee accepted the position of head cricket coach at Mill Hill School in north London.
[24] His departure was controversial: the biography of Harold Gimblett, written by the historian of Somerset County Cricket Club, David Foot, reported more than 40 years after the event that "old players still grumble about the way Jack Lee departed".
[25] Gimblett told Foot, in tape recordings that form the basis of the biography, that Lee had been vocal about the disparities in treatment between the amateurs who still formed a large percentage of the Somerset side and the half dozen professional cricketers the county employed; Gimblett also said that Lee felt he was due a benefit match.
"[26] To Gimblett and other Somerset professionals, Foot wrote, this indicated that the county officials were "offhanded in their treatment of the pros", and particularly of one with a history of being disrespectful of the amateurs.