Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

He’d come in late, which would aggravate me, but he’d always have an excuse – he’d come in with a bacon sandwich in his mouth and you knew where he’d been – to the shop down the road on his way in for a bacon butty.’ With his legendary fondness for pies, Simmons soon became a great favourite with the Lancashire crowds. ‘He looked a bit too big and a bit bulky at times to be playing county cricket,’ says his captain, ‘but people love players like that, don’t they?’ This was also the year in which Clive Lloyd was first qualified to play competitive cricket for Lancashire. His batting and fielding had made a big impression on Farokh Engineer when the West Indians had toured India and Farokh recommended him to the county. ‘But he wears glasses,’ Cyril Washbrook had protested. Fortunately any deficiencies with Lloyd’s eyesight were ignored and his long and happy association with Lancashire began. However, with the West Indies team touring in the first half of the summer, his appearances were restricted to just nine championship matches and he was able to play little part in the Sunday league. Lloyd nevertheless played a crucial role in starting the county’s John Player season on the right foot, an undefeated 59 steering Lancashire to a five-wicket win against Sussex at Hove. Lloyd did not return to the county side until the end of July, and in his absence the match against Essex at Chelmsford was lost by 108 runs. The home side’s 265 for six was to remain the highest total recorded in this first season of the 40-over competition. As the years passed new scoring peaks were achieved and new norms set, but in the early years of the John Player League such a target was of Himalayan proportions. Once early wickets had been lost, Lancashire faced inevitable defeat. Yet Jack looks back at what he learned from this match as crucial to his strategy for the rest of the season. The Essex batsmen had hit with great freedom towards the end of the innings, Keith Boyce reaching 50 in 23 minutes, and one bowler, John Sullivan, had suffered a fearful pummelling, ending with figures of 8-0-73-1. ‘I realised then that you have got to have more than five bowlers. You need to have a relief column coming up.’ With Clive Lloyd away and Barry Wood not playing – ‘I think he’d been taking down a shed and it fell on him’ – there had been no-one to whom Jack had felt he could turn. It would not happen again. 74 ‘And there was this new competition’