Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Though Jack had imagined that the match in which Lawton had watched him must have been one in which he had prospered, it seems that this was the only occasion that the Evening Chronicle scout saw him in action. There is no record of how many Jack scored – he thinks it was seven, but his brief knock no doubt reinforced his skipper’s high opinion, and he had put a marker down as one whose future scores should be noted. Whatever happened that day, Lawton left the ground with a false impression that was to play an important part in shaping the history of Lancashire cricket, for the ‘19-year-old’ he had been watching was actually 22. Most of those whose virtues were paraded each week in A.E.Lawton’s column were teenagers or, at most, 20 or 21. Young Jack Bond, recalled as a fresh-faced youngster by those who first met him when he came to Old Trafford, may still have looked a borderline case when entering a pub, but in reality he had completed his National Service and within a year he would be a married man. As he drew up his list of eight to enjoy winter coaching at Old Trafford, would Lawton knowingly have included a young man of 22? We shall never know, but it seems unlikely. His Peter Pan qualities intact, Jack would head each week for Lancashire’s indoor school, a bleak and chilly shed, a coke stove in the corner providing its only warmth. ‘Spending most of his time with his backside to this stove,’ as Jack recalls him, was the county’s left-arm spinner, Malcom Hilton, who had played four Test matches for England and who was now the winter assistant to the man who ruled supreme, Stanley Worthington, the county’s head coach. Stan Worthington was an imposing figure. Parading in the manner of a sergeant-major, he invariably sported a white cravat, which Jack remembers set off a face deeply sunburnt in both summer and winter. ‘Whether it was a fake tan we shall never know,’ Jack muses, ‘but I don’t remember him ever going abroad.’ Reminiscent of the unpopular disciplinarian to be found on many a school’s teaching staff, the head coach was a man whose unexpected appearance was always feared by the young professionals at Old Trafford. A stalwart of Derbyshire, Worthington had played a major part in securing his county’s only championship title in 1936. The same summer saw the only century he was to hit in his nine Test ‘We thought you were nineteen’ 19