Lives in Cricket No 43 - John Jackson

83 Final Matches scored 40 and came up against the future Lancashire and England captain, A.N.Hornby who scored 20* for Blackburn. Hornby, it should be noted, gave Jackson some stick in the return match, scoring 74 while Jackson took three for 64. In the return match against Accrington he made 31 and took three wickets. He had more than earned his keep at Burnley. For the 1870 season Jackson accepted a position as groundsman, coach, cook and player at the Dingle Cricket Club in Liverpool. This was an appointment that was to last for three years and necessitated a family move from Nottinghamshire to Merseyside. He made two appearances for the AEE. The first was against the Sheffield Shrewsbury Club at Bramall Lane when he took six wickets in the second innings. His final recorded appearance for the AEE was at Sleaford on 6, 7 and 8 July in 1871 where the local XXII beat the AEE by 12 wickets after the AEE had collapsed to 42 all out. Jackson took one wicket. His final recorded appearance was for An Eleven of England against East Lancashire at Accrington on 1, 2 and 3 September 1871 in another drawn match. He made 3 and 4, took a catch but failed to take a wicket. At this stage Jackson the cricketer disappears from view, but in his interview with A.W.Pullin he filled in some of the gaps about what he was doing over the next five years. He was engaged by Lord Massareene in Ireland in 1864. In 1875 and 1876 he was at Richmond in North Yorkshire. He spent 1877 with Cambridge University and Norfolk County at Norwich. Then followed three years at Birkenhead Grammar School. In 1880, aged 47, he must have hung up his boots. He had well earned a long and happy retirement. Sadly he did not get one! I should set the scene with a quotation from Pullin’s interview. Always sensitive to the sad decline of old cricketers when their days of glory ceased Pullin says: Now let me give the reverse side of the picture. A bent and grisly man of sixty-seven, subsisting on a pittance of 5s.6d. a week, willing to work but elbowed out by younger and more vigorous competitors in the battle of life, having no permanent address and always hovering on the threshold of the workhouse. Jolly game, cricket.