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

139 refused Sunday fixtures and played in such fixtures as the county side versus Grimsby and District XI at Ross Group’s ground on Thursday, June 23, in an afternoon match where McVicker and Maslin were missing as they were playing for the Minor Counties against the West Indian touring team. Johnny apparently wanted to wind down his time with Lincolnshire as he announced during the 1966 season that he would only play if and when required, and as an amateur, for the 1967 season (aged 56) by which time he was with his next league club, Morley. This would finally prove to be his last season of minor county cricket. He played just four matches for them in June and July, and only in one match, away at Chatteris, Cambridgeshire did he have any kind of success as he took four for 24 and two for 40 and scored 34 not out in his only innings of the match as he helped Lincolnshire to win by eight wickets. Without question Johnny could only have parted company amicably after his last match at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk on July 19 and 20 and he would have wished well that team that had grown and improved alongside him now as they were to continue that improvement. Throughout his time at Lincoln, as in the rest of his career, Johnny was an outstanding fielder. In 1962 the Lincolnshire Echo reported (July 6) “Lawrence at age of 48 [His real age was 51!] is one of the most sprightly cricketers one can imagine”. Johnny would have been especially delighted, in the final game of 1965, to take a diving catch at short leg off Brian Evans’s bowling to dismiss Ivan Watts when that batsman had previously hit him (Johnny, that is) for six. Statistically, I have it that Johnny played in all 95 times for the county, scored 2963 runs, at an average of 24.3 per innings and took 424 wickets at an average of 16.5 runs per wicket. (Only 92 of these matches are on ‘Cricket archive’ and I assume three matches were not in the Minor County Championship and not in their records.) His best score was 99 and his best bowling was eight for 82. On no less than 32 occasions he took five or more wickets in an innings. The Lincolnshire link – a further decade in a different form of county cricket