Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

105 back in Yorkshire by the time the issues came to a head – so we can presuppose that he wasn’t especially involved. His former colleague Eric Hill was by this time a cricket journalist with the Somerset County Gazette and became a prime mover in a protest group designed to overthrow the club committee. He reckoned that whilst the committee members were “sound blokes in their own fields” they did not have the wisdom they thought they had about cricket. Skipper Ben Brocklehurst wanted to back the players but when the committee meeting arrived he backed the committee leaving Eric Hill still angry 50 years later – as Stephen Chalke describes it in his excellent account of the unrest. The protest movement had yet made some impact but it took some time before improvements in the recruitment of younger players came eventually. It did not help in the immediate future. Johnny would have certainly known about and been saddened by these developments but it would not have deterred him from his own role as a good club man and someone who could raise the morale of his fellow players. Stephen Lawrence told me his father regarded Brocklehurst A first class career with Somerset As spectators take to their seats, Somerset take to the field in the 1950s; Johnny Lawrence is centre, wearing a cap.