Jack Bond obituary | Cricket

Jack Bond obituary

The cricketer Jack Bond, who has died aged 87, captained Lancashire during a golden era when they took the new one-day discipline by the scruff of the neck. In doing so, they made themselves the best limited overs team in England.

Bond led the county for five summers from 1968, during which time they won the first two 40-over Sunday League competitions (1969-70), and three successive 60-over Gillette Cups (1970-72). Until his appointment as skipper, Bond had been a journeyman middle order batsman. But he proved himself an excellent leader when unexpectedly given the chance.

Although he had the advantage of captaining a talented side that included exciting players such as Clive Lloyd and Farokh Engineer, he was, as the former Lancashire chief executive Jim Cumbes said, “a wonderful handler of people” whose infectious enthusiasm instilled self-belief and loyalty in his charges.

One-day cricket was still a novelty at the time and Bond, in tandem with his players, developed a new, dynamic outlook based around greater fitness, improved fielding, a more aggressive approach to run-getting and greater use of spin bowlers to take the pace off the ball.

Wisden named him one of its cricketers of the year in 1971 solely based on his performances as captain, and noted that Bond’s success was down to the fact that “the players knew him as a great fighter and a good companion – a man who had played the game the hard way, suffered rebuffs through injury, illness and loss of form, but still remained cheerful”.

He was born in Kearsley, on the outskirts of Bolton, to John and Ruth, who were both cotton mill workers. He played his early cricket for Bolton school, Kearsley, and then Radcliffe in the Central Lancashire League, and in 1955 joined Lancashire, for whom he was a solid, unspectacular batsman during the 1960s. Despite scoring more than 2,000 runs in the 1962 season he was never assured of a place in the first team, and by the middle of the decade had dropped down to become second XI captain.

Although it appeared that he had found himself in a cul-de-sac, in fact Bond’s success with the second XI led to his surprise call-up in 1968, in his mid-30s, to lead the first team after Brian Statham had stepped down from the job.

Lancashire had been through a lean period up to that point, and with a side containing young hopefuls such as Barry Wood, David Lloyd and Ken Shuttleworth, they needed new direction. Clive Lloyd and Engineer arrived as overseas players in 1968, and Bond was able almost immediately to turn his side into a winning outfit, taking the inaugural John Player Sunday League in 1969 and then, the following year, doubling up the Sunday League title with the Gillette Cup final at Lord’s.

With Bond showing new brio in his batting, frequently making useful runs at No 6 or lower, they had further wins in the Gillette Cup final against Kent in 1971, in which he turned the game with a breathtaking catch to dismiss Asif Iqbal, and against Warwickshire in 1972, in which Clive Lloyd scored 126. Along the way Lancashire took part in some classic televised games that helped to cement the popularity of one-day cricket and sweep away any residual scepticism about its worth.

Among the most glorious of these was the Gillette Cup semi-final against Gloucestershire in 1971 at Old Trafford, in which David Hughes, watched by millions on television, came in to bat for Lancashire at 8.45pm before hitting 24 in an over to win the match. In the pre-floodlight era, Bond, who finished on 16 not out, had raised concerns about the poor visibility, pointing out that the moon had begun to appear in the sky. The gruff umpire Arthur Jepson replied that if he could see as far as the moon then there was clearly no problem – and the game, thankfully, continued.

Bond’s success as captain also extended to the longer form of cricket, as Lancashire finished third in the County Championship in 1970 and then 1971, a dramatic improvement on the mid-table placings that had preceded his arrival. He was such a fierce competitor, however, that he regarded the fact that he did not win the championship as a failure.

Bond retired from Lancashire after the 1972 season at the age of 40, before making an unsuccessful return for one season as player-manager and captain of Nottinghamshire in 1974, the year he also became an England Test selector. He played 362 first-class matches during his career, scoring 12,125 runs at an average of 25.90.

After Nottinghamshire he was a manager at Lancashire for a time, before moving to the Isle of Man, where he became head cricket coach at King William’s college and won the island’s table tennis championship.

In 1980 he was back in management at his home county, and then became a respected first-class umpire from 1988 to 1997. A down-to-earth character, he retained his close involvement with Lancashire even into his 80s, when he worked part-time as a member of the ground staff at Old Trafford.

He is survived by his wife, Florence (nee Fletcher), whom he married in 1955, his daughter, Stephanie, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His son, Wesley, died in 1986.

Jack (John David) Bond, cricketer, born 6 May 1932; died 11 July 2019

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