Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

piece for publication in Monday’s paper. At the top of his column ran the standard legend: ‘Former Lancashire and Derbyshire player A.E.Lawton is on the look-out for young talent for special coaching to be paid for by the Evening Chronicle .’ In 1953 Lawton had been taken by the talent of a young Geoff Pullar at Werneth, and during the dismal summer of 1954, whenever rain did not frustrate him on his mission, he would pen the story of a match with particular and kindly emphasis on the performance of the younger players, sometimes offering wise observations on some of their shortcomings such as failure to back up properly when batting. The summer found him making notes of boys who would only reach their sixteenth birthday in mid-season, among them Alan Bolton, a pupil at Darwen Grammar School, who would soon be on the staff at Old Trafford, and Arthur Sutton, destined to become one of Cheshire’s greatest players, a left-handed bat whom Lawton saw as ‘a Jack Ikin of the future in the field.’ Roy Collins, by now 20 and already employed at Old Trafford, was another to earn a mention, and there was a wistful reference to a son of Jack Iddon, a lad whose father might have captained Lancashire had he not been killed in a car crash shortly before the start of the 1946 season. On Saturday 19 June, Lawton’s chosen match was at Radcliffe, where the visitors were Crompton. Taking the chance to chat with both captains before the match, he learned first about the potential of five Crompton youngsters, most of them still in their teens. ‘Next I tackled the Radcliffe captain, E.Ratcliffe, who told me they were not so well off for young players but he named John Bond as a 19-year-old “good ‘un”, who came to them this season from Walkden, where his batting average was 43.’ The outcome of the match, as so often in league encounters of the time, hinged on the performance of the two teams’ respective professionals. ‘Unfortunately this budding talent was up against Cecil Pepper and Sonny Ramadhin,’ Lawton was later to report. Radcliffe, put in to bat, enjoyed a brisk start as Pepper hit a quick 32 before he was ‘utterly deceived and bowled by Ramadhin’, who finished with nine for 28 as the home side folded from 70 for five to 78 all out, only the captain among Pepper’s team-mates reaching double figures. Crompton’s batsmen also struggled, but 22 from Ramadhin settled the issue as his side got home with three wickets to spare. 18 ‘ We thought you were nineteen’