Lives in Cricket No 43 - John Jackson

9 Chapter Two John Jackson - Cricketer There is a marvellous description of Jackson’s bowling in Volume V of Arthur Haygarth’s Scores and Biographies which captures the bowler perfectly, and all the other writers – and there are many of them – agree with the description in almost every detail: He was one of the straightest, fastest and best bowlers that has ever appeared, and though his speed was so great, he delivered easily to himself, all weathers suiting him. By some he was called ‘the demon bowler’, and his delivery was unexceptional as to fairness …. His career, though rather short, must be considered most brilliant. He had the fast bowler’s temper too. Any batsman who had the temerity to stand up to him and, even worse, smash him to the boundary, could expect instant retaliation in the form of a fast and vicious beamer coming whistling at the intrepid batsman’s head. Jackson had another habit, peculiar to himself. Every time he took a wicket he blew his nose violently. As he took rather a lot of wickets pretty frequently, this adenoidal clearout earned him the nickname of ‘Foghorn’. His other nickname was ‘Gypsy’, a reference to his possible parentage. He was tall, 6ft 1/4 inch, and weighed 14 stone which later expanded to 15. His great years as a bowler were between 1857 and 1863. His figures are set out in the Appendix, but suffice it to say here that he took 671 wickets in first-class matches in these seasons and that only one century was scored against a side for whom Jackson was playing. The century was hit by William Caffyn of Surrey who has gone on record as saying that he considered Jackson to be a far superior bowler to his other great contemporary speedster, George Tarrant of Cambridgeshire. According to Caffyn, Jackson bowled straighter, kept a better length than Tarrant and was equally as fast. Just for the record nine first-class hundreds were hit by players on Jackson’s side in the same set of matches. A bowler of Jackson’s pace on the fiery wickets of the day made life very difficult for batsmen, and this led to Jackson being the subject of the first cricket cartoon to appear in the pages of Punch magazine. A much battered cricketer is shown returning from a match and a bystander approaches him: Bystander: Good match, old fellow? Cricketer: Oh yes, awfully jolly. Bystander: What did you do? Cricketer: I ’ad a hover of Jackson; the first ball ’it me on the hand,