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

29 Chapter Three Starting to make his way up the cricketing ladder School cricket, Sunday School cricket, playing with his father and brother for the village team at Carlton, intermittently up to the age of 20 and also playing for his chapel and for Leeds YMCA were all features of his early playing days. He then briefly plays for Guiseley (apparently in 1932, age 21) and then Rothwell, the following year: these must have been some of the stepping stones in Johnny’s early career. We see him scoring runs but not with any great consistency except when he opens the batting briefly at Rothwell. As a talented youngster he went to the nets at Headingley and was coached by all time greats – especially George Hirst – but also Emmott Robinson and Herbert Sutcliffe. Hirst seems to have had the most formative influence on the young Johnny Lawrence. George Hirst had played cricket for Yorkshire and England dating back to the 19th century. His great season was 1906 and his achievement that year of doing the double-double (2000 runs and 200 wickets in one first-class season) has still never been equalled in Britain or anywhere. After his playing career, he became coach at Headingley for Yorkshire – at one time jointly with Bobby Peel and then as the head coach throughout Johnny’s youth and beyond. George Hirst was undoubtedly Lawrence’s forebear as a genial encouraging type of coach who allowed for individually different modes of talent. It was he who encouraged the young Johnny to try his hand at bowling. It was he who no doubt inspired Johnny to take up coaching before too long. That great batsman whose heyday was in the 1920s and early ‘30s, Herbert Sutcliffe, would have been a pupil of