Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Chapter Fourteen ‘He’ll cook the bacon sandwiches’ Jack’s second departure from Old Trafford meant that he was able to devote more time to the Jodrell Arms. On their return from the Isle of Man, he and Florence had looked for a business that they could run in partnership with Lawrence and Stephanie. The view across the Irish Sea had inspired thoughts of a boarding house at Blackpool, but they had taken a tenancy of the small hotel, at Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, because it was a more convenient base for working at Old Trafford. With eleven bedrooms and a kitchen and bar to run, Florence and the other members of the family were always busily employed, and for a while Jack was now able to give them more assistance, particularly enjoying the chance to resume the banter across the bar that had always been a feature of life in the fish-and-chip shop. He spent the summer of 1987 playing cricket for Whaley Bridge in the Derbyshire and Cheshire League. Now 55, he found that table tennis and fell walking in the winter kept him fit, and he was still able to make a decent number of runs for the club. There was one century at Hawk Green, and he held some good slip catches. But he found the first-class game still beckoning. Disinclined to try for another coaching post, he applied to join the umpires’ list. He trained up during the winter, though other commitments prevented him from completing his course. He was nevertheless accepted for the reserve list but, before the season started, David Lloyd withdrew from the first-class panel to take up a position as a commentator with Sky Television, and Jack received a call from Lord’s to say that he was to be promoted into the vacancy. His first match was at Oxford, where he stood in The Parks with Nigel Plews, appointed to the Test match panel for the first time that summer. So began ten years travelling the county circuit, punctuated by just two appointments as third umpire in Test matches in 1993, in the days shortly before the duties extended to 129