Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

take the score to 381 before Shuttleworth ripped through the Yorkshire top order, edging ever closer to the England call he was about to receive. There were four lower-order wickets for Lever before Yorkshire, 121 all out, were asked to follow on. A pulled muscle in his side now prevented Shuttleworth from taking the field, but the other bowlers rose to the challenge as the Yorkshire batsmen found the mountain too steep to climb. Victory by ten wickets was Lancashire’s first in a Roses match for ten years. It took the county to the top of the table with 66 points, six ahead of Surrey, who had played two more matches. ‘It was a great win that,’ Jack says with relish, ‘to beat them at Leeds, both teams pretty well at full strength. And, once we were winning games, confidence grew. It was just a case of switching them on really and leading them out. Everybody seemed to know what was expected of them without it being drummed down their throat all the time. In other words, they’d all grown up as cricketers by then.’ The next match almost brought Jack his revenge against Kent at Old Trafford, but the visitors, challenged to make 234 in two and a half hours, lost their ninth wicket to the final ball of the match while still 31 short of their target. In a summer when Old Trafford’s excellent batting pitches made positive results hard to come by, the Gloucestershire match produced three declarations, but Jack’s carrot – 256 in two hours and a half – could not entice the visiting batsmen. Against Warwickshire there were twin hundreds for Pilling, the second assisted by friendly bowling in its latter stages in a vain effort to entice a declaration, but the destructive power of John Jameson in the first innings made Jack reluctant to offer more than a token challenge. Next, at Ilford, it was Lancashire’s turn to chase a target, but the prospect of making 272 in three and a half hours on a pitch offering the bowlers some assistance ended with the batsmen grateful for a rain break as they staved off defeat with only one wicket intact. After the frustration of four draws in a row the challenge for the Championship was re-ignited when Middlesex came to Old Trafford. For this match Jack lost his two overseas players, who had both been recruited for the Rest of the World team whose five-match ‘Test’ series had been hastily set up once it was clear that a South African side could not be welcomed to the British Isles. Opposing them and winning a first England cap (as it was regarded at the time) was Ken Shuttleworth. ‘They stormed the gates to get in’ 83