Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

served as secretary, only minutes from his home. Sadly, the ground was an early casualty of war, when it became the site of a warehouse for the storage of unprocessed rubber, the location chosen because of the drains that served the cricket field. But the war did not stop Jack enjoying cricket and football at his junior school, where he found a sport-loving headmaster, Jim Hardy, who played cricket for Walkden Moor Methodists in the local league, and who made competitive games of cricket and football an important priority for his young charges. Though he admits to neglecting the academic side of school life, Jack still made a favourable impression with Hardy, and the headmaster was influential in securing a place for him at Bolton School and persuading John Bond that his son would prosper there. An independent fee-paying establishment, and one of the oldest schools in Lancashire, Bolton School can trace origins back to 1516, when records show it was ‘a going concern’. The present school, with its Boys’ and Girls’ Divisions, came into being in 1913, when it was re-endowed by William Hesketh Lever, the soap manufacturer, soon to become the first Viscount Leverhulme, whose family had been involved with the school’s welfare since the seventeenth century. ‘Don’t call him Little John’ 10 The Junior eleven at Bolton School, 1945. Jack is next to the scorer in the back row.