Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

restored to the first team – too early, he now admits. ‘I wasn’t strong enough or fit enough. It took me about eighteen months before I could pick up a shovel full of coal and throw it on the fire.’ There were a couple of thirties, but a string of low scores saw Jack end the season a second-team player once more. His side’s best batsman just twelve months earlier, he was now looking at a career under threat. While Jack’s star had risen to new heights in 1962, the fortunes of Lancashire had plumbed hitherto unthinkable depths. A team that had achieved its best post-war results under Nigel Howard had slid back under Cyril Washbrook, threatened to take the title as soon as Bob Barber replaced him, but had fallen back to what was then its lowest-ever point in the second season of Barber’s captaincy. Thirteenth spot that year belied a fair record of nine victories against only seven defeats, but the following summer the luckless Joe Blackledge presided over a side whose points tally dropped from 142 to just 60, only a Leicestershire side in parallel disarray depriving Lancashire of the wooden spoon. It would be a long haul back towards respectability, the next five seasons seeing a rise of just one place each year as first Ken Grieves and then Brian Statham assumed the captaincy. Looking back, Jack finds it hard to credit how well the side had done in the early months of Barber’s captaincy. So much was against a man whom Jack grew to respect and like. ‘Bob was very unlucky,’ he says. ‘When he first captained Lancashire he’d never really lived in the outside world.’ Jack also recalls Barber playing for Cambridge against the county: ‘He batted a heck of a long time and I can remember Cyril saying, “This lad will never captain Lancashire.” Cyril didn’t seem to like him at all – I don’t know what it was.’ However, the cult of the amateur captain was still alive, some counties going to ludicrous extremes to find a young man with social credentials that could be passed off as leadership qualities. By 1960 Barber was a player of proven worth, so his appointment became a formality. Yet he took over without endorsement from his predecessor, and he had already suffered, as so many amateurs did, from the resentment of professionals who had to make way or see a friend drop out when he was picked to play. Jack was one who suffered this fate: ‘As soon as Bob came back, I would drop out of the side. It happened with David Green as well.’ Losing ‘After all, it’s only a friendly match’ 40