Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Chapter Five ‘A Methodist coaching the Catholics’ Brian Booth, three years younger than Jack, had been on the ground staff when he arrived and first won a regular place in the county side in 1961. Joining Lancashire principally as a leg-spinner, he had gradually developed his batting and had become a regular opener. Booth was a man with whom Jack shared a room for away matches. On Sundays the pair would both go off to church – but in different directions, Jack seeking out his fellow Methodists, while his friend made for a Roman Catholic church. Booth had spent a number of winters coaching at the Christian Brothers College at Kimberley in South Africa but, when he found himself unable to return at the end of the 1963 season, he offered Jack the chance to deputise. ‘A Methodist coaching the Catholics!’ The thought that a follower of Wesley should take the job appealed to Jack’s sense of humour. He lost little time in accepting. His South African adventure was a far cry from some of Jack’s earlier winter jobs. Finding off-season work has always been a problem for cricketers. For those on Lancashire’s books in Jack’s time, it could be doubly difficult as the county paid its players a nominal sum, fifty pounds for the whole winter, which allowed the club to retain their insurance cards and pay the weekly stamp. Perhaps there was generous intent behind the gesture, but it meant that the cricketers were precluded from signing on for unemployment benefit. They had to find work. In his first winter as a player with Lancashire, Jack had discovered to his surprise that he could not re-join his previous employers. ‘I’d thought I’m a cricketer now, they’ll surely want me. You get a bit big-headed, don’t you?’ With two years in the Pay Corps he could point to wide clerical experience. ‘I thought I’ll be able to get any job, but NALGO said “Oh, no. He’s got a job. Cricket’s his job. We’re taking on somebody that’s out of work.”’ There had been a winter looking after hire purchase agreements for a television dealer, but working on Saturdays was alien to Jack: 46