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

186 juniors). Chalke then quotes Copey saying: “It was three bus rides: into Leeds, out to Rothwell, then a little bus down a dark country lane. The shed had two nets and a changing facility at the back. He’d say “What are you doing on Tuesday? Well, if you want to come and bowl for the afternoon, I’ve got one or two lads.” He’d be having a private session and he’d want someone to bowl for him, he went and charged me half price! “I liked Johnny. He’d got a lovely smile. He was a bit of a one-off. I sat the MCC coaching award there when I was 17.” However it was a different coach, Johnny Wardle, who helped Copey try to sort out his bowling action at a later point in his career. Steven Rhodes Steven Rhodes who played for Worcestershire and was unlucky to only play 11 times for England passed through the school at the age of about 14 when he also received coaching from other sources. To be fair, he remembers being coached by Johnny and his brother Sam but couldn’t remember whether he learnt a great deal there or not – as he had so many coaches and it all seemed to merge that he couldn’t say what he had learnt from whom! He certainly did not learn his wicketkeeping there but from his father who played at one time for Nottinghamshire. He is however one more player who attended those nets and then became a star in the cricket firmament. He was to become Worcestershire’s Director of Cricket for a while. Jimmy Binks Though Jimmy Binks was not as far as I know an attender of Johnny’s nets, I shall mention him here as Johnny played a key – and acknowledged – role in Binks’s career. Jimmy Binks – in his recorded and printed interviews with Stephen Chalke and Andrew Collomosse, respectively – pays tribute to the role Johnny played in recognising his A few of his proteges