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

124 won the League title – let alone the Council as well and they were only the second club to have gone a season unbeaten (Hull had achieved this feat twice) and Leeds were only the third club to achieve the double (Hull, twice and Scarborough had achieved this feat). Johnny won the League’s Ezra Taylor bowling award because of having the best average. His 54 wickets had cost a mere 8.16 runs each. Fellow Leeds bowler Hallas came second. Johnny was second to Billy Sutcliffe in the Leeds batting averages – admittedly not as prolific in League terms as players such as Dickie Bird at Barnsley and Ted Lester at Scarborough but interestingly with a fractionally better average than the man who won the batting award, J.Townsley of Castleford, who qualified by virtue of the fact that he had just crossed the line to the target of 500 runs (506). The likes of Bird, Lester, Sutcliffe and Lawrence would simply not have been needed as often with the bat whereas Castleford were less star-studded. A typical story is told by a then teenager, Maurice Atkinson of Hull who – playing at Headingley against Leeds probably in 1958 – never left his crease in facing three balls from Johnny. He tells the story ‘against himself’. The first ball faced was a huge googly which ‘keeper Chadwick took down the leg side. The second ball was a huge leg spinner which Chadwick took in front of Clues at first slip. Clues then says to Sutcliffe at second slip – ‘this lad won’t last long’ – and the very next ball is a top spinner which traps Atkinson leg before. Johnny then consoles the lad as he passes the bowler on his way back to the pavilion and assures him that he’ll have many more innings to come. It is hard to see how – in what subtle way – this Leeds team of all talents which romped home to such great success in 1958 had become weaker – or at least some of their top rivals especially Scarborough had perhaps become stronger from 1959 onwards. Leeds still did well. Johnny was, as always, among the wickets. Clues, Bolus (before he was called away more regularly to county cricket), Sutcliffe, Hallas and company continued to do well. And yet no more honours were to come Leeds’s way in the rest of this period A star again in league cricket