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

168 he played with at Somerset such as Roy Smith and Peter Wight. Other players like Brian Bolus who played with him at Leeds and Martin Maslin his colleague at Lincolnshire were never coached by him but both have said they “learnt from watching him play”. It is interesting to read Mike Brearley’s reflections on coaching. Writing in 1985 in his The Art of Captaincy , he reflects: “Most top cricketers are, as I have said, complacent or cynical about their chances of being helped to improve. In this respect, they are unlike top musicians or other artistic performers who will keep aside some periods of each year to visit their personal guru, who knows their work through and through.” Brearley defines a good coach as “one who enables the potentiality of others to flower” and cites Tiger Smith who helped him personally even at the age of 89, but also cites his admiration for the perfectionist Boycott who visited Lawrence’s ‘sheds’ which Brearley mistakenly thinks were somewhere near Barnsley. When he was at Somerset, all the players used to take part at the beginning of the season in the coaching of young hopefuls. Johnny coached away from his school at countless venues where he was invited. These included Rishworth School, Pocklington School, Madley Street Baths Cricket School in Hull, Leeds Grammar School, Bootham School in York, Howsham Hall Preparatory School near Malton and he also coached the youngsters at Lincolnshire when he was a player there. Every summer from when his first-class career was over, that is from 1956, until the late 1970s Johnny ran a coaching school for three weeks in August at a facility in Northumberland called Otterburn Hall west of Alnwick, which was a Christian education establishment and after 1980 a hotel and some coaching with different coaches took place there until 1986. While returning to play league matches on Saturdays his family would stay up there and enjoy a fabulous holiday, which was effectively the only A coach and those he influenced