Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

bred into Florence from an early age. Jack relates a story of an unusual footnote to an absorbing game that took place at Adlington shortly after Florence’s birth. ‘After the match Albert and Annie got back to the bus stop and Albert said, “What have you done with Florence?” They’d left her in a carrycot at the cricket ground! She was only a month old. It must have been a hell of a match!’ In September 1950 Jack began his two-year stint as a National Serviceman, joining the Royal Army Pay Corps. His initial posting to Devizes was to be his last. After initial training, he moved to C Company, which was the overseas training wing and which was also responsible for training soldiers in other regiments who would eventually become Pay Corps sergeants when they returned to their own units. Commanding B Company was Captain Harry Thompson, later to rise to the rank of brigadier, who was captain of the station cricket side. Jack remembers him as ‘a dour, out-and-out Yorkshireman’, but his White Rose roots did not deter him from taking a paternal interest in the welfare of the newly arrived Lancastrian in one of the other companies. Thompson always kept an eye out for any new arrivals at Devizes with sporting talent, and he could see that in Jack he had a useful cricketer, who could also play table tennis and who would soon adapt to hockey. Jack played regularly in the station cricket team alongside Thompson, who was a good medium-fast bowler, and he often accompanied Thompson to play for other sides. A friendship was forged that would last a lifetime. In the 1990s the pair were able to reunite at Southampton when a boundary fielder in a county match confirmed to the retired brigadier that it was indeed Jack Bond umpiring the match. Runs flowed from Jack’s bat in the matches against local clubs and other military teams, and in his second season he was selected to represent the Royal Army Pay Corps against other branches of the Army. The highlight of his summer was the match against the Cross Arrows at Lord’s. Though Cross Arrows’ matches have for many years taken place in late summer on the Nursery Ground, this match was played on the main ground, but the teams did not use the principal dressing rooms. Instead, they changed in the old professionals’ quarters, now the Bowlers’ Bar in the pavilion. Observing the traditions of an earlier age, they emerged onto the playing area from a side gate. Jack’s opponents included several Middlesex players who had ‘Don’t call him Little John’ 13