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

55 success and who was also unlucky never to have had a Test career; and J Crowther who also featured strongly in the League batting averages – as well as his good friend Miles Coope. In these war years Johnny would regularly feature in the League bowling averages and often in the batting averages as well. Most of these stars were batters and by 1944 Bill Andrews had moved on and Bingley certainly were short of another bowler besides Johnny. Sixty wickets at 11.6 each – and tenth in the League bowling averages – was not enough to prevent Bingley being relegated in 1944. However they recruited Robbie (R.B.) Rae the Lancashire colt and a great bowling partnership with Johnny was then formed for the 1945 season. Len Bannister, a Leeds schoolboy at the time and now octogenarian, remembers making a rare rail excursion to Bradford and seeing Johnny play in a cup-tie in the Priestley Cup when a large crowd of around or over 3000 saw Bingley play Pudsey St Lawrence. In 1945 the war came to an end too late for the 1945 first- class season apart from a few celebratory fixtures. League cricket continued as ever. Johnny topped the Bradford League bowling averages with 69 wickets at 6.5 each and these Sydney Barnes-like figures – yet more remarkable for such a flighty slow bowler – must have contributed greatly to Bingley winning division two by nine clear points and re-gaining their position in the top flight. In one match in particular on Saturday, July 14 and reported in the Yorkshire Observer two days later, Johnny was to score 95 and take five for 69. He batted with his friend Miles Coope while Coope scored 119 and together they put on 228. They each scored 11 fours and two sixes. Though Coope was missed five times and Johnny three, each was well worthy of their respective collections – eight guineas for Miles and seven for Johnny. Stewie Dempster, the New Zealand Test player, scored 73 for Idle in reply. His innings took much longer but was described as a more polished innings and was chanceless. Idle scored 161 Wartime in the Bradford League