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

56 – their highest score of the season – and they were only beaten with five minutes to spare. During the game, the Yorkshire Observer reported, “Lawrence drove the ball hard; it hit the bowler’s boot; umpire jumped; ball passed him; another ball dropped out of his pocket; batsmen were making run; bowler picked up “other” ball; broke wicket; wonder what crowd would have thought if he [Lawrence] had been given out.” Reading unexplained press reports from the period of wartime and immediately afterwards, there seems an idiosyncratic nature to some of the cricket. The writer of Bingley’s match at Farsley on September 3, 1945 stated: “At last it happened – the complete double over.” We are talking of eight ball overs anyway which were in operation at the time. He goes on: “Remember last season in the Bradford League there was a 13 ball over from Les Townsend the England and Derbyshire bowler for Undercliffe.” Now “with the eighth ball of his second over, he [Johnny Lawrence] got Harry Daphne leg before but instead of the over ever being changed Lawrence carried on against the new batsman G. Thompson and both scorers notched 16 balls for that over.” A former Surrey scorer of over 40 years’ experience, Fred Boyington, had earlier commented on an umpire whose mind would go blank on the fall of a wicket and he would lose count and he nearly allowed a double over to take place before Fred had called out to him from the score box and prevented the occurrence. But this had been in the days of four-ball overs. I certainly cannot throw any more light on what the newspaper of the day had failed to explain yet one feels that if such an event were to happen, Johnny Lawrence would somehow manage to be centre stage – and who knows maybe Johnny’s playful sense of humour had somehow been partly responsible. Maybe he had conspired with the umpire to allow him this indulgence. It would have been in light relief to the wartime and post-wartime mood. Wartime in the Bradford League