Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

Chapter Ten ‘A great catch to end a great innings’ Two one-day trophies had Lancashire’s name engraved upon them, but as a new season dawned, the perennial challenge still faced the captain. Could 1971 bring an end to the long drought and see the Championship return to Old Trafford for the first time since 1934? ‘That was the main one at the start of every season I can remember,’ says Jack. ‘Even when the other competitions came along, even then, the thing that the old Lancastrians, the committee and the rest were desperate to win was the County Championship.’ Just a few years earlier Lancashire had been perpetual no-hopers, but a London bookmaker now installed the county as favourite for each of the three competitions, although at 5 to 1 against Jack’s team were rated less favourably for the Championship than for the Gillette, where they were quoted at 4 to 1, and the John Player League, where the price was down to 5 to 2. Jack certainly had a powerful squad at his command. It was a timely reflection on the progress of the younger players he had helped to nurture, that four – Hayes, Hughes, Pilling and Shuttleworth – should be chosen to represent MCC in the seasonal opener against the champion county at Lord’s. In the campaign that lay ahead for Jack there was unlikely to be a shortage of Red Rose runs. The attack was led by two England pace bowlers, albeit that Lever and Shuttleworth had both had a tiring winter in Australia and New Zealand, but Jack could also call on a pair of spinners, Hughes and Simmons, now growing in experience, who gave him a balanced attack in a season when a new regulation required pitches to be left uncovered once a match had started. Beating Gloucestershire by an innings at Bristol got the championship season under way in the best possible fashion, but this early form was not maintained. There was a second win in late May, when Hughes and Simmons bowled out a Glamorgan side still chasing victory at Swansea ‘when all rational hope was gone’, but Lancashire did not taste success again until the last match in June, when a six-wicket victory at Northampton came, after three 97