Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Jamaica, which Jack missed, handing over the captaincy to David Lloyd. With Derbyshire and Yorkshire winning and others picking up bonus points, Jack’s side slipped down to sixth place. Perhaps it was the Blackpool air that revived the team as they recorded their most emphatic win of the season. The Sussex total of 193 was soon made to look modest as David Lloyd and Wood posted 265, Lancashire’s biggest opening partnership since Washbrook and Place had taken 233 and 350 off the same opponents in 1947. Capitulating for just 100 in their second innings, Sussex presented Lancashire with a victory in which The Times suggested that they had ‘outplayed their opponents to a degree that must have been mildly embarrassing.’ This was to be the high point of Lancashire’s championship season. Their next match was at Edgbaston but, after Saturday’s play, the two teams, as if sponsored by a petrol company, travelled north to Old Trafford for their Sunday game. It was a wasted journey with rain allowing play for only 21 balls. Meanwhile Kent had a comfortable win against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham to reduce Lancashire’s lead to a single point. ‘A dramatic climax’ to the Sunday league now seemed a possibility to The Times . Back at Edgbaston for the championship match, Jack was last man out for 76, having shared an eighth-wicket partnership of 106 with Simmons to give Lancashire a useful lead of 121 on first innings. M.J.K.Smith, captaining Warwickshire in the absence of his namesake, then joined forces with Jameson in a stand of 230, delaying his declaration until Lancashire were required to make 179 in 25 minutes plus the final 20 overs. Knowing they had to go for the runs, Lancashire’s batsmen sacrificed their wickets, Snellgrove and Pilling both being run out when set. With five overs to go and 54 still needed, Smith then brought on his 17-year-old leg-spinner Warwick Tidy to persuade Lancashire that victory might still be possible. Tidy’s two overs cost 16, but Smith’s gamble had kept the game open. Simmons, his eye still on a win, holed out on the boundary off Lance Gibbs. It was only when their eighth wicket went down that Lancashire belatedly battened down the hatch. Fielders now crowded the bat as Gibbs began the final over. Off his first ball he induced a catch from Hughes, and from his sixth delivery he saw his captain snap up a catch in the gulley to dismiss Shuttleworth. This defeat, by 31 runs, was Jack’s second in the Championship, but he could still reflect that no other county had lost so few. 88 ‘They stormed the gates to get in’