Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

One black man of whom Jack grew fond was William, the college employee who helped prepare the pitches. One weekend Jack gave his assistant a few rand – it was worth about two pounds, he reckons – and William never turned up for work for the next two days. ‘He’ll have been boozed up,’ Jack was told. A lesson was learned: ‘In the future, if I gave him a tip, I made sure it wasn’t the day before a match!’ ‘Going to church didn’t resolve anything,’ Jack adds sadly of the apartheid that surrounded him. ‘We were just uncomfortable, but we weren’t living in fear.’ Despite the emotional discomfort life in the South African sunshine had many compensations, sufficient to kindle thoughts of emigrating; but both Jack and Florence had widowed mothers back in England and they were loath to be so far away from them. For the 1964 season changes were in the air at Old Trafford. Brian Booth had moved on to Leicestershire and there were new faces competing for places in the batting line-up. David Green, who had first appeared while at Oxford, was now a full-time cricketer and another Oxford Blue, Duncan Worsley, came into the side after the Varsity match. Bob Bennett, a former amateur who had enjoyed a long run the previous year, now played fewer matches, as did Jack Dyson and the young Harry Pilling, but a regular place for most of the summer was found for Bob Entwistle from Burnley. This was also the first year in which Lancashire appointed a manager for the first team; Cyril Washbrook, now a committee member, took on the mantle, usually with George Duckworth at his side. Though Washbrook accompanied the side to most of their away matches, Jack has no recollection of the former skipper giving any rousing speeches or holding team meetings. ‘He was acting more as an observer.’ Jack was still hampered by the injury to his wrist and it was a struggle to reproduce the form he had shown before his accident. He started the summer in the first team and scored a fast century in a first-day run feast against Hampshire, but after only nine championship matches he was back in the second team. He recalls how he lost his place after two failures in the match at Derby. ‘I got out twice playing the late cut, one of my run-scoring shots in my good years.’ Though Jack describes his dab as ‘a shot that Washbrook lived on’, he feels that it led to his exclusion from the team. No-one said so 50 ‘A Methodist coaching the Catholics’