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

57 Chapter Nine One interesting match After Bingley’s 1945 season was over Johnny was lucky to get to play in and have an outstanding personal performance in one more match of significance that year. Heywood in the Central Lancashire League were able eventually to recruit Johnny to play against Crompton in the Wood Cup Final in a match scheduled for September 15 at Dane Street, the then home of Rochdale CC. Presumably their regular ‘pro’, Leslie Bullcock, was absent due to injury or illness and this would have enabled Heywood to seek a replacement professional as the rules allowed. In the end the match stretched over three Saturdays due to the weather but the patient and keen cricket supporters in these parts were undeterred. The ground at Dane Street – which sadly has now given way to a supermarket – held over 5,000 comfortably in those days, and as league crowds were often round the 3,000 mark then for a cup final it was probably full – and there would have been big crowds when the match resumed after rain interruption on a second and then a third Saturday. The Central Lancashire League was and still is to this day another of the strongest leagues of the north of England. I have heard it argued that it has been a stronger league than the perhaps more celebrated Lancashire League in which Johnny was to play in 1956. This match was Johnny’s only encounter connected to this league – and yet he was able to step into the limelight with sweeping success. Derek Birley in his Social History of English Cricket makes the point that in contrast to the Lancashire League which had suspended professionalism during the war and had a more homespun look “... the Central Lancashire League although technically suspending professionalism, relaxed its regulations to allow guest appearances from players engaged in work of national importance, with the result