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

201 someone the basics of spin or swing or whatever, the rest has got to come from the heart – that’s the most important thing for any bowler. “But I’ve known clubs get hold of people and try to rebuild their action, and correct what they see as faults. It doesn’t work and usually ends in trouble.” In the draft of a letter written January 2, 1980 which may or may not have been sent or published, in response to a newspaper editorial at the time, Johnny suggests as an alternative to the 22 metre idea, that bowlers should have the front foot behind the popping crease – something that did in fact come into force. He suggests widening of the batting crease from four to five feet to encourage batsmen to play forward. He also suggested allowing LBW from the leg side, stopping of ball-shining and not allowing helmets for fielders who would no longer be allowed to field within five yards of the batsman in front of the wicket. Whatever the rights and wrongs of each of these suggestions, his concern was always to “encourage the type of bowling which is much more attractive to watch, more pleasure to play and brings the fielders more into the game which is what is needed.” Johnny suggests that the commercial interests running the game have been blocking changes which would make the game more skilful. The village green, the metaphor of cricket as in ‘it’s just not cricket’, the notion that even for a Yorkshireman who always plays to win there is something more – a higher ethic; these are recurrent themes in Johnny’s life and in the things he says. He was a cricket sage never lacking wisdom to all who visited his oracle, not at Delphi close to Mount Olympus in the Greece of old, but at Rothwell and then at Lordswood, in the heart of Yorkshire. He suggests in an article by Colin Macbeth from a cutting which I have been unable to source that the growth of one day limited over top level cricket has not been good for the game and sees it as part of the ‘mad rush of the times’ which creates its own pressures. He tended not to talk religion or politics to those who “Make pitch 22 metres”