Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

number six, scored nine as he ‘tackled Lock bravely’ and 12, his second dismissal ending the match when Lock took a fine return catch. Retained in the side for the rest of the season, Jack was in the runs against Cambridge University with 53 and 59 as Lancashire slumped to another innings defeat after the university batsmen had tucked into a second-string attack. A loss to Leicestershire had extended Lancashire’s bad trot – six defeats in eight matches – when Somerset came to Old Trafford. The team’s fortunes now turned round. Paving the way to an innings victory was a hard-hitting 72 from Jack, in which he went to his fifty in ‘majestic manner’ as he straight drove Jack McMahon for six. With an innings that ‘put heart into the county at the right moment’, he dominated a ninth-wicket stand of 69 with Tattersall, to which the off-spinner contributed just ten. This was to be Jack’s highest score of a season that brought him three more championship fifties and 608 first-class runs at 19.61. Jack had come into the side at a time of change. When he arrived at Old Trafford two years earlier, there had been a settled batting line-up. For the best part of a decade the runs had come from names schoolboy supporters could rattle off: Washbrook, Place, Ikin, Edrich, Grieves and Wharton. The first crack appeared in that first summer of 1955, when Winston Place started the season with a string of poor scores and was dropped, never to return. Playing alongside him in the second team, Jack soon learned to understand why Place was such a well-liked cricketer and remains grateful for tips he was able to pass on. A vague attempt to install Place as assistant coach did not come to fruition and tears ran down his face when his contract was not renewed at the end of the season. There were others among the senior players to whom Jack would turn for help and advice as he struggled to make his mark in the first-class game. ‘Geoff Edrich, he was a great influence, he was like a father to me. And John Ikin was another fatherly figure; he would look after the youngsters on the field.’ The long-serving wicket-keeper Alan Wilson was another ready to help a newcomer, while the one who looked after the players’ rights was Alan Wharton. ‘He was the one you’d go to if you wanted to make a point to the captain or committee. He knew a lot about the workings of the club and the people in charge.’ Roy Tattersall was one who particularly befriended Jack. Coming from Bolton, he offered regular lifts into Old Trafford in his ‘You’re a professional cricketer now’ 31