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

9 Preamble admiring – even if his way of life and views on life were greatly different to my own. Johnny Lawrence was to be a lifelong devout Methodist and a Christian Socialist and a pacifist who would always stand up and be counted for his beliefs. Johnny’s personality and character which made him so popular to those who got to know him: his love of the better things in life – and in particular, music; his creative craftsmanship in everything he did; and his patience and positivity with other people and optimistic outlook on life – the very qualities which were to make him such a great cricket coach – became a great source of fascination for me. Then I found I was enjoying – despite the difficulties – the job of researching his life and trying to discover his earlier years – at a time when he and all his contemporaries had all as far as I know – passed away – fitted in with my liking for solving a puzzle; in this case perhaps a jigsaw puzzle where a lot of the pieces were missing – and many of them would stay missing. After all he had been born over one hundred years earlier and a generation and a half had largely perished since the time of his childhood and early manhood. I met no-one who knew him in the first half of his life. I even got pleasure from the wasted time dealing with other Lawrences who would prove not to be – or have any connection with – the subject. Thus John Lawrence the rugby union administrator of the same period, John Lawrence, historian of Irish cricket, John Lawrence, horse-racing commentator better known as Lord Oaksey, John Lawrence photographer and John Lawrence a singer (though our John Lawrence was an accomplished musician who could certainly sing!) are all different personages to the subject of this book. I thought the early parts of his life – for a man born such a while back – would prove even more inaccessible than they proved to be. But then I happened to read an Inspector Morse story – where the writer, Colin Dexter, delves further