Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Cortina. ‘Not everyone had a car in those days,’ Jack points out. ‘I knew of his background in the Bolton league and he knew of mine.’ Tattersall’s league career had started before the war, his first game, for Bradshaw before he moved to Tonge, coming as it has for so many: ‘I got this job putting the score up. A pound a year I got – ten shillings in June and ten shillings in September. I was eleven or twelve. One day they were short. Someone didn’t turn up and they asked me to play.’ The one man towards whom Jack felt no warmth was his captain Cyril Washbrook, who had taken over from Nigel Howard in 1954. One of the county’s greatest batsmen, Washbrook was a man Jack found rather aloof with his interest focussed on those he felt had England potential rather than the lesser players. ‘I felt I needed all the help I could get, but I didn’t get it from Cyril.’ Jack was not alone in finding Washbrook a difficult leader. Frank Parr had made his mark as a crowd-pleasing wicket-keeper who would dive around in spectacular fashion – he is a great admirer of Geraint Jones among modern keepers, and in 1953, when he had just been capped, MCC made enquiries about the possibility that he might tour the West Indies as reserve to Godfrey Evans. Under Washbrook’s captaincy, and well aware that his lifestyle as a jazz musician did not meet with the approval of a skipper he now describes as ‘making Genghis Khan look like a liberal’, Parr played only five more matches before his career as a first-class cricketer was over. Cricket’s loss was to become jazz music’s gain: some years later Frank Parr would become the manager of Acker Bilk. Roy Tattersall is another with reason to resent the way he was handled by his county skipper. An experienced and thinking Test-match bowler, whose principal weapons were variations of pace and angle of attack – rather than power of spin – he had found Nigel Howard a sympathetic captain; but ‘Washbrook wanted people to bow and scrape to him. He sometimes told me how to bowl. “Go round the wicket” or “Go over the wicket”. Nigel was good – he understood me. But with Cyril you had to do what he said. He didn’t get the best out of me.’ On his improbable route to the captaincy of Lancashire, Jack would take note of the strengths and weaknesses of those under whom he played. With Washbrook, he felt that too often games were allowed to drift, and yet his overbearing manner still kept junior players on their toes. ‘He fielded at cover and I was extra 32 ‘You’re a professional cricketer now’