Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Sussex innings in check. David Hughes, with the wickets of Jim Parks, Tony Greig and Peter Graves, all bowled, at a cost of 31, was the most successful of the bowlers as Sussex were contained to 184 for nine in their 60 overs. It should have been easy for Lancashire, but at 37 for two David Lloyd and Barry Wood were out. The stage was now set for Clive Lloyd. With some memorable strokes he took the score to 86, but his 29 runs were a cameo when an innings of substance was required. ‘I think he felt at the time he got out that our best chance of winning had gone,’ Jack remembers. But the diminutive Harry Pilling, with whom Lloyd would share many partnerships in the cause of the Red Rose, buckled down, taking Lancashire past the winning post and earning the Man of the Match award for his undefeated 70. Jack is fulsome in his praise of Pilling, ‘such a proud Lancastrian’, and feels that his innings had a wider significance for the county’s cricket: ‘Harry played a tremendous innings and guided us home. I think that did Clive quite a lot of good, and it did us all a lot of good when we suddenly realised that it was all down to teamwork and, even if your best player fails, the rest of you pull together to put it right again. It took a bit of pressure off Clive as well. I think he played his cricket for Lancashire from then on in the more relaxed atmosphere that we’d created, even though he was the great Clive Lloyd.’ The six-wicket victory over Sussex was to be the height of Lancashire’s dreams. The next week Kent took eight points from a rain-ruined championship match against Surrey, so when Lancashire returned to London the following Saturday, only a cricketing miracle in their match with Surrey could bring them the title. A record 27 points – only possible if their batsmen could score 450 in 85 overs – were needed for Lancashire to be crowned champions. The bowlers did their stuff, claiming all ten Surrey wickets to secure the five points that would ensure third place, but so much rain had fallen that the match was in its final day before the last Surrey wicket fell. Lancashire then closed their season in sadly feeble style, sliding to 58 for seven. Two one-day titles had been convincingly won, but domestic cricket’s greatest prize remained elusive. That autumn, Jack was chosen by the Professional Cricketers’ Association as their Player of the Year, and the following spring there was one further 94 ‘They stormed the gates to get in’