Lives in Cricket No 22 - Jack Mercer

131 ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Skip,’ was Jack’s immediate reply, ‘but I’ve been weighed down by the bowling figures walking over here!’ Jack also built up a great rapport with the press, not least because at several grounds, the scorers occupied the same room or tent as the scribes. He always added ‘Everything’s approximate,’ when reporters made an enquiry about the number of minutes someone had batted for, or how many balls had been faced. When rain intervened, his fund of tales and magic tricks could lighten up the most depressing of days, and Jack rarely spurned any opportunity to display his conjuring skills. Indeed, David Foot, the highly respected West Country journalist, remembers an afternoon at Weston-super-Mare when he had the good fortune to bump into Jack whilst he was making his way back from the luncheon marquee to the scorers’ box at Clarence Park. David had always had a love of conjuring, and as he met Jack, in between the rows of parked cars, he told him of his fascination with all things magical. A glint immediately appeared in Jack’s eye as he put his arm around David’s shoulder, before producing a pack of cards from the pocket of his Northamptonshire blazer and spreading them out on the bonnet of a Volvo parked close to the scorers’ box. As David later recounted, ‘Jack’s props were his playing cards and a back pocket of loose change that he would pull out at the merest hint of en- couragement, to demonstrate his refined skills of sleight of hand.’ One afternoon, ‘when very few of the illustrious players in the Somerset and Northamptonshire sides could fashion many runs, Mercer showed me three card tricks and another mesmeric illusion with half a dozen 10p coins.’ David went on: He accompanied the impromptu performance with some quite urbane banter and a little wink as he detected my genuine bewilderment. What he didn’t appear to notice was my increasing concern that he showed no obvious inclination to forsake his singular, appreciative audience and return to his duties in recording the state of the game. By now Lamb and Yardley were back in the middle fighting their commendable way to half-centuries. Jack Mercer was still making the aces disappear from the bonnet of a Volvo! 116 After a minute or so as applause greeted the crowds appreciation of a boundary from the visiting batsmen, David tactfully suggested to Jack that they should return to their duties, and Jack duly ambled happily in the direction of the scorers’ box and his abandoned scorebook which were missing a few dot balls and scoring strokes. This was one of many occasions when kind-hearted colleagues helped him out, rarely with a cross word exchanged about his absence or, as sometimes happened, a post-lunch nap. Indeed, I remember the afternoon in the late 1970s when Northamptonshire visited Glamorgan for a Championship match at Sophia Gardens and my scoring services A scorer’s lot 116 David Foot, Beyond Bat and Ball , Good Books, 1993