Lives in Cricket No 22 - Jack Mercer

113 Chapter Eighteen The last hurrah Jack’s career with Glamorgan did not end in a blaze of glory; his last two years with the county saw him take 61 and 51 wickets respectively. After so many years of honest toil, he was not the unerringly accurate bowler he had once been, and his modest returns came at a higher cost. 104 1938 was a modest year for the club. Despite the injection of new talent in the form of Wilf Wooller and the presence of Austin Matthews, they slipped back to sixteenth place in the Championship. Maurice Turnbull and Dick Duckfield each had modest seasons. In the Championship, Turnbull scored only 658 runs at 21.93, whilst Duckfield completely lost batting form, obtaining only 293 runs in thirteen matches, and his confidence in the field, with the Maesteg-born professional becoming virtually unable to catch a ball struck towards him and regularly fumbling balls driven along the ground. These physical and psychological demons sadly cost Duckfield his place on the county’s staff and he was released at the end of the season. Jack bagged only a couple of five-wicket hauls in 1938, and his greatest contribution that summer came, ironically, with the bat against Worcestershire at NewRoadwhere together with Clay, the last pair doggedly played out the last quarter of an hour to save the game. Glamorgan had been set a stiff target of 387 in four hours, and a few Welsh romantics had fanciful thoughts as Arnold Dyson and Emrys Davies set off at a gallop before Dai Davies chipped in with a quick-fire fifty. But Bob Crisp and Reg Perks steadily worked their way through the rest of the Welsh county’s flimsy batting, leaving the last pair to hang on grimly, defending with ramrod-straight bats. When Worcestershire visited Cardiff the following June, Jack’s batting was once again a thorn in their side as for the second successive year, his efforts saved the match on the final afternoon. But his innings in 1939 was of a character rather different from the one the year before; this time he struck Dick Howorth for 31 in an over – which now comprised eight balls. His lusty striking came in the final half-hour of the match, which had seen Glamorgan’s last pair come together with a lead of just ten. From Worcestershire’s point of view, there was still enough time to claim the final wicket and then hit the winning runs, but Jack had other ideas as the last pair added 45 in the space of ten minutes. After a dot ball, Jack struck the hapless Howorth for 6, 4, 2, 6, 6, 6 and 1 with, in the words of a local journalist, ‘all of his sixes crashing against the metalwork of the rugby 104 In addition Jack freakishly dislocated a finger on his right hand in two places during the match against Kent at Maidstone in July 1938 and missed a couple of matches as his damaged digit healed.