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

184 must have been the only bowling machine in Yorkshire – Headingley didn’t have one till quite a bit later (when the new cricket school was built there).” Stephen Lawrence tells the amusing anecdote in relation to a short amount of film of Johnny coaching another lad in a practice match and Ashley batting at the other end and recalls how the young Ashley was egging to get on camera – but then he makes it on camera for the final ball that is filmed and is comprehensively bowled by the bowling machine. This bad luck sadly became a part of a career of a player who should have made it at an even higher level than he did. Also there! So many players great and small passed through those nets finding time in the winter to practise there. If they had another coach, for example Arthur ‘Ticker’ Mitchell they often wouldn’t even like to be coached by Johnny – let alone pay more money for the privilege. ‘Dickie’ Bird Dickie Bird was not strictly speaking a protege of Johnny but was very much influenced by him. He says that without the opportunity to practise his batting against top class bowlers in the spinners’ lane at Rothwell he would never have made it as a first class cricketer – and if this had not happened he would almost certainly never have become a world famous umpire afterwards. Harold Dennis Bird came from Barnsley and after a promising football career (alongside his childhood friend Tommy Taylor who became Manchester United and England centre forward) was curtailed at age 14 through injury, he concentrated on his other great love, cricket. He opened the batting for Barnsley with that rising star in the world of journalism Michael Parkinson. He attended the nets at Headingley in the days when Arthur Mitchell and Maurice Leyland were the coaches. He regarded Mitchell as his specific coach – and would go to Rothwell mainly on a Saturday afternoon – off season – to spend as many extra A few of his proteges