Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Mortimore when they could have bowled one of their seamers. It gave us a chance to put bat to ball – and that’s just what David did. I said, ‘If you’re going to hit it, hit through it, don’t drag across it. Hit it straight if you can.”’ With fielders struggling to sight the ball, there were two sixes, two fours and two twos as 24 were taken from the over. Taking heed of his captain’s advice, Hughes had dragged only one of the shots towards mid-wicket. The scores were now level. As the hands of the clock passed ten to nine, Jack nudged the fifth ball of Procter’s next over off his hips for a single to take Lancashire to another Lord’s final. He had made only 16 of the 67 runs added since he came to the wicket, but he had kept his head and his wise counsel had helped the young David Hughes take the Man of the Match award. David Hughes remembers that they ‘had decided to get them all off Morty, as we wouldn’t have been able to pick the quickies up. Jack Simmons had shouted from the balcony after I had hit three balls of the over to calm down and look for singles. I’m glad I didn’t hear him. The champagne flowed and I took a glass to John Mortimore – as a player, I knew just how he must have felt.’ Jack looks back on one of cricket’s most amazing finishes: ‘Goodness knows what would have happened if we’d only got two or three in that over and we’d been into another over and another! It was the longest day of my life. It was after midnight before we could get away from the ground with all the celebrations.’ The twilight drama behind them, Lancashire still had other business on the agenda. There had been stumbles in the Championship. At Derby, Jack had reinforced his reputation as a good man for a crisis with a patient 41 as he and Engineer added 168, thus gaining six batting points from an innings that had once been tottering at 33 for four. There was a brief but unavailing tilt at victory in the second innings before survival became the priority. The exhilaration of the twilight match in the Gillette was then sandwiched by an uninspiring draw with Somerset on a docile Old Trafford pitch, and a Roses match at Sheffield ended by rain when already heading for a draw. Hopes of a championship challenge revived at Edgbaston where, for the second year, Warwickshire captain Mike Smith timed his declaration to set up an exciting challenge with victory again coming off the very last ball – this time to Lancashire. The final 102 ‘A great catch to end a great innings’