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

117 centuries and 46 fifties. He scored 1000 runs in a season three times. Although in general his bowling was much more consistent than his batting he only took 100 wickets in a season twice. Even in his relatively short first-class career he took 262 catches (259 of them for Somerset) and is thus sixth in the all time list of Somerset catchers. Three times he took over 30 catches in a season – 1949: 37; 1951: 36 and 1947: 34. There were 798 first-class wickets, 791 of them for Somerset at an overall average of 24.97 runs per wicket. Forty times he took five or more wickets in an innings and on four occasions he took ten or more wickets in a match. My friend Andy Stoddart has worked out for me that 21.87 per cent of his wickets were stumped which is considerably more than the number of caughts behind the wicket and 54 of these came from his first keeper at Somerset, Wally Luckes. What is more phenomenal is that in six and a half seasons Harold Stephenson took 130 stumpings off Johnny’s bowling and though this was just over half the number of ‘stumped Les Ames, bowled Tich Freeman’ at Kent before the Second World War, this was probably the second greatest partnership ever in this regard. Johnny relaxes with Bill Andrews at the Bath Cricket Festival. A first class career with Somerset