Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

The following year, with Clive Lloyd back but now playing fewer matches to accommodate fast bowler Patrick Patterson as the only permitted overseas player, Abrahams remained in charge. Fourteenth in the Championship, with nothing to show for their efforts in the one-day game, meant that there was the inevitable call for change, while six years of disappointment meant that Jack’s job was on the line. For Jack and Florence, cricket now assumed its rightful perspective as they learned, in January of that year, of the death of their son Wesley in a motoring accident. Jack had been coaching with John Savage in the indoor school when Wesley and a fellow member of Disley Hockey Club, Michael Jordan, had been making use of the Old Trafford gym. The two young men had left and returned to Michael’s home, later popping out in the car for a take-away meal. On their return there was a fatal collision with a late-night bus. The first that Jack and Florence knew of the tragedy was in the early hours of 22 January, when a policeman knocked on the door of the Jodrell Arms, the pub in Whaley Bridge where all the family ‘I don’t mean me – I mean thee!’ 125 The coaches’ lot. Jack, with John Savage, anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Benson and Hedges final at Lord’s, July 1984. Lancashire won by six wickets.