Lives in Cricket No 43 - John Jackson

18 Early Career, Marriage and Family After a winter’s rest Jackson was back in action for the summer of 1856. He played regularly throughout the season making appearances in first- class matches, but most of his time was spent with the All-England Eleven As far as first-class matches are concerned John Jackson made his second appearance for Nottinghamshire on 21 August 1856 at Newark, playing against an England XI that included Alfred Mynn, H.H.Stephenson and the delightfully named Julius Caesar. Jackson took four wickets in a hard- fought match which England won by 7 runs. He made two appearances in the North and South fixtures, major matches in those days. This included his first ever match at Lord’s which took place on 30 June and 1 July and which was won by the South by six wickets. Jackson was run out without scoring in North’s first innings of 117 but then blasted out the first three batsmen of the South, W.Nicholson, S.Ponsonby and E.Willsher for 11, 1 and 0 respectively. South were then 22 for four but recovered to make 170 with Jackson’s figures being three for 41 in 19 overs, five of them maidens. North made 96 second time around, Jackson scoring 11. Jackson bowled Julius Caesar for 1 but could not prevent South winning the match who took 24.2 overs to make the 44 needed – Jackson taking one for 12. The return match at the Broughton Club ground in Salford, Manchester was ruined by the weather. North made 219 (Jackson 5) and South were 46 for three when the rain came. Jackson bowled W.Nicholson out for 24 in taking one for 17 in twelve overs. For All-England matches in 1856 the team’ itinerary has already been listed. Jackson played in 19 matches for them of which 11 were won, 5 lost and 3 drawn. He took 166 wickets for 609 runs although the rider has to be added that some of the bowling figures shown in Scores and Biographies are not necessarily strictly accurate. Haygarth made the general comment that bowling analyses do not always tally with the number of runs scored off the bat. In the matches he played, Jackson batted 29 times, scoring 90 runs, with five innings being not outs. He took nine catches. Some highlights of the season (all against Twenty-Twos) were his twenty-one wickets for 58 runs against Stockton, eighteen for 69 against Loughborough, fourteen for 43 against Maidstone, sixteen for 35 against Trowbridge, fifteen for 45 at Loughborough against Stoke-on-Trent and 14 for 40 against Sleaford. A flavour now of some of the games gleaned from contemporary match reports in local papers. We read of a fine military band entertaining spectators at Durham. There were 33 ducks made in the match against Twenty-Two of South Wales at Neath. No member of the local side passed double figures and 26 of the ducks were made by their batsmen. This match was played under the patronage of the Marquis of Bute. The correspondent of the local paper spent four lengthy paragraphs describing the facilities provided for spectators, without once mentioning the cricket or even giving the result of the match. In a match at Downham Market the first seven wickets of the local Twenty-Two fell without a run being scored.