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

134 of a landmark and he wouldn’t have lost any sleep over the fact that 99 was to remain his highest score for the county despite many good batting performances to come. On July 11 and 12, 1962, he took seven for 75 against his native opponents including the wickets of future Test players Chris Balderstone and John Hampshire and the future Nottinghamshire captain Mike Smedley but the wicket which was to elude him in all professional matches of Geoffrey Boycott fell at the other end, caught Beeson bowled Gerald Drakes. The Yorkshire first five were all England and future England players. Brian Close’s scalp fell to Michael Sharman. Balderstone, with Birkenshaw and Boycott, was one batsman who generally (but not always) played Johnny’s bowling well – being respectful, getting forward down the line and to the pitch and playing through with the shot – as he described it later to Peter France the Paddock batsman, who felt totally flummoxed when he was to face Johnny himself in the Huddersfield League, even though he had faced Johnny’s bowling at Rothwell as another attender of those nets! Johnny helped his adopted county to a great start at the Rolls Royce ground in Shrewsbury. A useful 24 as part of a mammoth 354 for five declared (opener Brian Swift scoring 152), and though not significantly needed to bowl in the first innings (three overs for five), he then took seven for 45 to enable Lincolnshire to win by an innings and 111 runs. At the meeting when his contract was renewed for a further three seasons in the summer of 1961, there were two extremely touching eulogies to Johnny and his value to the team. Skipper and batsman Jack Todd called him “a wonderful performer, a wonderful man and a great morale-booster”. His vice-captain, the fast bowler Hubert Cherry Downes “said that most players learned more from playing with Lawrence than they had throughout the rest of their lives.”, the Lincolnshire Echo reported. In August 1962 versus Bedfordshire at Bedford he took The Lincolnshire link – a further decade in a different form of county cricket