Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

‘I was usually going to watch football. Suddenly I couldn’t go.’ He worked in the fish-and-chip shop and later in the café that replaced it, serving meals to the workers in the local cotton mill. Another winter job entailed a 5.30 start, marshalling all the lorries that queued to load up with Christmas goods from the GUS warehouse in Farnworth. ‘I was the Receiving Officer – sounds a bit dodgy, doesn’t it?’ Bidding farewell to Florence, who was to join him for Christmas, Jack sailed out to South Africa on the ageing R.M.S. Pretoria Castle – it had a permanent list to one side, he remembers. On what was his first venture overseas, he was accompanied by a dozen English professionals who had taken winter coaching jobs. He shared a cabin with Paul Gibb, a one-time Cambridge Blue who had played for Yorkshire and Essex and whom he now knew as a first-class umpire. ‘I had the top bunk and he had the bottom.’ In their cramped cabin there was only one drawer each and Jack remembers that Gibb’s was full of pills and tablets. ‘What he was taking them all for, I don’t know, because he was as thin as a rake.’ Gibb was not the most sociable of companions, preferring to lie in the sun rather than take part in deck games and other amusements. ‘He hardly said a word the whole trip. I can remember him always being first into the restaurant and always being last out – because he always finished up not with a dish of ice cream but a canister, a catering canister.’ Once he had settled in at the Christian Brothers College, Jack’s mornings were devoted to net sessions for boys of different ages throughout the school who came during their games period; in the afternoon he would be with the first team. On Saturdays Jack played with his boys as they competed in a men’s league. There were six teams in the division, four men’s clubs and two schools, but while the schools were inviolate, one of the clubs would be relegated at the end of the season. With points scored against the schools always important to their opponents, Jack was struck by how competitive the matches were. ‘I think this is one of the reasons why South Africans mature a lot quicker than our boys. They would be only 14 or 15 and they were playing in the men’s league. The game was played very hard and you found out very quickly who was going to be good enough. And the way that these lads fielded – they chased everything to the boundary.’ Jack also believes that, although all the matches were played on grass, the boys benefited from practising on matting. ‘The nets ‘A Methodist coaching the Catholics’ 47