Jack Bond

Who is Jack Bond?

John David "Jack" Bond, born in Kearsley, near Bolton, Lancashire, on 6 May 1932, is a former cricketer who played for Lancashire and, for one season, for Nottinghamshire.

Jack Bond was a right-handed middle order batsman and a good close fielder who had a fairly unspectacular county cricket career for Lancashire from 1955, being assured of a regular place in a strong batting line-up in only a few seasons, among them 1962, when he scored 2,125 runs at an average of more than 36. But by the mid-1960s, he was second eleven captain and an irregular first class cricketer.

Success with the second team, though, led to an unexpected call-up to be first team captain from 1968 and over the next five seasons, Bond led a previously under-achieving side to a run of success in one-day cricket competitions that has not been equalled. Intensively competitive, Bond led by example in the field and often made useful runs, normally batting at No 6 or lower. A mostly young team included future England cricketers such as Barry Wood, David Lloyd, Frank Hayes, Peter Lever and Ken Shuttleworth, and Lancashire recruited proven matchwinners in Clive Lloyd and Farokh Engineer as the overseas stars.

But Bond's great ability was to get match-winning performances out of average county players in one-day games, and he was also a pioneer in using spin bowlers as an integral part of a one-day attack. Under him, Lancashire won the Sunday cricket league in its first two seasons, 1969 and 1970, and took the premier one-day trophy, then called the Gillette Cup, for three seasons in a row from 1970 to 1972, a feat that has not been equalled. The county challenged for the County Championship more strongly during Bond's captaincy than for many years, but he did not achieve the same success in the first-class game.