Posted by Tony Hutton
A long awaited cricket book with a difference landed on the doormat this week. As I well know it has been many years in the planning and had become a real labour of love in search of a publisher. In the end it has provided an excellent addition to the Association of Cricket Statisticians admirable series 'Lives of Cricket'.
The book is entitled 'Schooled in Cricket, The Johnny Lawrence story' and is written by Steve Bindman. Even at his somewhat advanced age he stills turns up at the most obscure cricket matches of Yorkshire, dressed in his whites with full kit, ready to step in to play whenever a team is one man short or to act as a permanent twelfth man. His rather modest career record is published at length in the play-cricket archive going back to the year 2001 and makes fascinating reading.
The author, Steve Bindman, ready for action Boxing Day, 2015 at North Leeds cricket club.
However to return to the subject of the book, for those who do not remember him, Johnny Lawrence was a Yorkshireman, who like so many lost the best years of his cricket playing career during the Second World War. He was a leg spin bowler and useful batsman, who became a proficient Somerset county cricketer and subsequently an itinerant league cricket professional for various clubs in his native county, taking wickets by the shed load wherever he went.
I first saw him play during a family holiday to Somerset way back in 1952. Somerset were playing Lancashire at Clarence Park, Weston-super-Mare and Johnny was caught Berry bowled Tattersall for a duck. However a few days later against Hampshire at Taunton I saw him bowling nearly all day when his analysis read 42-10-97-4, in partnership with Horace Hazell, the left arm spinner who bowled nearly as many overs. Those were the days when spin bowling ruled the roost.
He was a regular performer in the long running annual Boxing Day charity fixture organised by the Northern Cricket Society in Leeds. He missed only three matches between its inception in 1948 and his last match thirty years later. Here is a picture of him padding up beside the Christmas tree in 1966.
His other claim to fame was running an indoor cricket school at Rothwell near Leeds, which eventually moved to Tadcaster and is still in business run by one of his sons. Most publicity surrounds the time spent there in the winter months by one Sir Geoffrey Boycott, but the list of county players and league cricketers who graduated with honours is substantial.
Steve has researched his subject in great depth, spending endless hours finding details of Johnny's league careers in local newspaper archives and talking to almost everyone who knew him or played with him or was coached by him. He is to be congratulated on a most interesting story of a devout Christian, who would not play on Sundays and would not allow any raffles to contribute towards his well earned benefit at Somerset. Family life and off field activities are also well chronicled and I would strongly recommend this excellent book to all cricket enthusiasts.
One final point of interest is that anyone who has read or has a copy of Duncan Hamilton's most recent book 'One Long and Beautiful Summer' should turn to page 52 where you will find that the anonymous spectator at York, with whom he has an interesting conversation, is without any shadow of a doubt none other than our friend and now author, Mr Steve Bindman.
No comments:
Post a Comment