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

21 was also a keen supporter of his trade union. How far back in the family history cricket goes is no longer known; but certainly Sam was a keen cricketer and a good one and was a regular wicket-keeper for Lofthouse – another nearby village – and then for Carlton. Lofthouse Cricket Club sadly ceased to be when the bulldozers ploughed through their ground to build the M62 motorway in the late 1960s. Many years later a contributor to Johnny Lawrence’s benefit fund, someone with the initials R.S.B wrote to the secretary of the Somerset county club (letter of 4/9/54): “I had many seasons of happy cricket with his father whose enthusiasm for the game was as infectious as it was exhilarating – and he was a wicket-keeper of no mean quality.” Annie must have come from a slightly more well-to-do background than Sam. Johnny’s comments about his maternal relatives commenting and jesting about the toddler’s strong Leeds accent – and his comments about village life which he appreciated on his visits to her native Bishop Burton and the nearby Middleton-on-the-Wolds, imply that it seemed to him at any rate that village life – as exemplified by village cricket – was more relaxed and less demanding than the big city – plus the fact that the Early days Annie holds baby Johnny and Sam holds Sam junior aged three; in 1911.