Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

104 First Ballers, and a Mystery Johns was run out for 3. Somerset got the 162 needed for victory before the end of the second day for the loss of only one wicket, Rippon making up for his first innings failure by scoring a rapid 102*. Johns was one of the victims of his hitting, with an analysis of 7-0-33-0. He had not done enough to keep his place. The rested and doubtless refreshed 48-year-old Nash regained his spot for the game against Lancashire at Swansea the following week, and Jack Johns disappeared from the county scene. In a season of ever-changing faces in the county side, this was perhaps a harsh rejection for one who had started so well. Of Jack Johns the man, we know little. From the 1911 census we learn that he worked in the tinplate industry that flourished in South Wales at this time. When he died on 10 January 1956, not long after his 70th birthday, he left a widow, Florence. And that’s about it, I fear. Of Jack Johns the bowler, we know rather more, thanks to this description from a local club history, written nearly 60 years after Johns’ most famous game, and showing that his memory remained long after the man himself had passed on: This more reticent member of the family [i.e. more so than his very unreticent brother Tom] was amongst the very best swing bowlers that have ever represented Briton Ferry cricket. Not tall, nor of powerful frame, Jack Johns brought a solid right arm over in a curve that was the geometrician’s delight and, consequently, moved the ball in or away from the bat. His pace was brisk, rising to fast, and when he succeeded in straightening his delivery off the pitch, he was all nigh un-playable … [he was] a craftsman with Family portrait of the Johns family, with Jack standing second from the left, taken in about 1903.