Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Chapter Seven ‘You’ll have to have all your teeth out’ The 1968 season was to be the last of Brian Statham’s distinguished career with Lancashire. He had led the county for three seasons, taking his team one place up the championship table each year, and had now accepted a sales position with Guinness. His new job was to start at the end of the summer, and he preferred to bow out of cricket without the burden of captaincy. In their search for the man to replace Statham, Lancashire’s first reaction, as it had been in 1964, was to look outside for candidates. Coincidentally this was the year in which regulations were to be eased to permit the counties to recruit an overseas player without the tedium of residential qualification. There was an immediate scramble to sign Garry Sobers, the world’s greatest all-rounder, who was still at the peak of his powers. Seven counties entertained hopes of success, few with more determination or reasons for hope than Lancashire. So generous, in their own eyes, was the offer made to Sobers that Cedric Rhoades felt that, were it be turned down, ‘the Club should publish exactly what he had asked for’. After weeks of indecision, news came through that Nottinghamshire had outbid Lancashire. Was the leading sports agent of the day, Bagenal Harvey, to blame for Sobers’ decision to go where the money was best? Smarting under the rejection, it was resolved at Old Trafford that in future the committee would not deal with agents. But, with no Sobers, the Club had no obvious Plan B. The hope was still to secure the services of a proven leader or a big name. There was another fruitless approach to Alan Smith and a concerted effort was made to bring Bob Barber back to Lancashire. Barber had already made clear to Warwickshire that he was now eyeing a business career and would be retiring from first-class cricket. He would, in any case, have been wary about returning: ‘I was not prepared to repeat what had been a very unhappy experience.’ Everything was different now, he was assured by the chairman’s emissary Arthur Booth, the former Yorkshire spin 60