Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

directly – it was not the way things were done in those days – but Jack was taken into the captain’s room after the match, where he learned that he was to be dropped, and Washbrook expressed the view that, with a lot of young players about, he was unlikely to get back. Captaincy of the second team on a regular basis was offered. ‘But I turned that down,’ Jack says, ‘because I still believed that I had something to offer as a first-class player. I didn’t want to be appointed and forgotten about. A number of committee people had written me off.’ With an average of almost 28, his first-eleven record compared favourably with most of the other fringe players, but it was still second-eleven cricket for the rest of the season and, in his unofficial position as captain, it was Jack who could take most of the credit for leading the side to a fine double as Lancashire won both the Second Eleven and Minor Counties Championships. These successes contrasted with the fortunes of the senior side, for whom climbing one place up the table was scant compensation for a season that ended in unparalleled disarray. To disappointments on the field were now added revelations of indiscipline that led to the sacking of Marner and Clayton, while Dyson was released because he was thought to be ‘not now up to the playing standard required.’ Out, too, went the captain Grieves. It was all clumsily handled, with the four sackings reaching the ears of the public before the players had been told. Jim Cumbes, now Chief Executive at Old Trafford, was a 20-year-old on twelfth-man duty when the news broke. ‘They didn’t find out till they read the newspaper in the dressing room. I was the twelfth man for that match and you can imagine the language that was flying round. It had been leaked by one of the committee. I thought, “What shall I do – go out or carry on pouring the drinks?” I can see them now sitting on the bench reading the paper – in the middle of a match.’ Though the cricket committee had earlier required that ‘Bond be asked to submit to a medical examination,’ Jack’s position at Old Trafford was the stronger for the loss of so many senior players. ‘I was lucky that Lancashire had a poor season and it all blew up with the wholesale sackings.’ Moreover, a later committee minute reveals that he was seen as ‘a very good influence on the younger players,’ while discussions about coaching positions also saw his name mentioned. ‘A Methodist coaching the Catholics’ 51