Did working class home life stump Jackson's England chances?

Derbyshire bowler Les Jackson

Les Jackson (left) and Harold Rhodes

Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1958. Back row (from left): J.D. Short, G. Wyatt, K.F. Mohan, G.A. Beet, P.W. Shilton, I.R. Buxton. Middle: D. Hall, D.C. Morgan, H.L. Johnson, E. Smith, D. Smith (coach), C. Lee, F.C. Brailsford, J.M. Kelly, H.J. Rhodes. Front: A. Hamer, C. Gladwin, D.B. Carr (captain), H.L. Jackson, G.O. Dawkes

The summer of 1958 was dreadful. Rain, chilly temperatures, brooding skies – the weather was as far removed from that ideal for cricket as could be imagined. Yet, one Derbyshire bowler took full advantage of those awful conditions and wrote himself into the record books with remarkable performances. Anton Rippon reports.

DERBYSHIRE lost a total of 113 hours play in 1958. Out of a possible 90 days’ cricket, the county matches were affected on no less than 43 days.

Only two out of 15 home matches escaped interruption. Nine away games suffered a similar fate, making, in all, 22 games affected by the weather. Seven days were lost altogether, five of them at home. No wonder Derbyshire lost nearly £11,000 on the season.

What compounded the problem was the fact that, in those days, county cricket was played on uncovered wickets. Once play had started, the pitch was left bare, not matter how hard it rained. There was one man, however, who revelled in those conditions, which were so difficult for batsmen.

Les Jackson had the impeccable pedigree of a Derbyshire opening bowler. In the brilliant summer of 1926, when he was five, he watched the striking miners of Whitwell Colliery play cricket day after sun-scorched day. His father, Tom, was a well-known local player. Two older brothers, William and Ben, also made their name in colliery cricket. One brother was killed in the First World War. Another would die in the Creswell Colliery disaster of 1951.

When he left school, young Les went to work on the coal face and, it seems, that the old saying – whenever Derbyshire needed a fast bowler, they simply whistled down a pit – might have been coined for him. Because when Jackson retired from the first-class game in 1963, he had taken a record 1,670 wickets for Derbyshire, at a cost of 17.11 runs each; and 1,730 in all first-class cricket, for only 17.38 runs apiece.

From the Whitwell Colliery club, he moved to Worksop Town in the Bassetlaw League, for £1 a game. In 1947, he played one game for Derbyshire. Two years later, he was playing for England against New Zealand, at Old Trafford, taking 3-72 on a slow, discouraging pitch.

Yet, despite that promising start – and despite all that was to happen in between – Jackson was well past a fast bowler’s retirement age before he was chosen for England again. As the years rolled on, Jackson reaped wickets galore. In 1958, however, he surpassed even his own brilliant best with 143 wickets taken at the cost of only at 10.99. Not since 1894 had a bowler returned such a mean average in an English season.

In that era of uncovered wickets, when batsmen had to develop skills simply to survive, Derbyshire boasted one of the finest attacks in the country. So 1958, with its terrible pitches, was going to be a particularly difficult season to face the county. This was especially the case at Burton, in a game that moved the Hampshire captain, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, to comment in his autobiography: “A Double Diamond always seems bitter to me!”

It was one of the most sensational cricket matches of the 20th Century. In August that year, Hampshire arrived at the Ind Coope ground on course for the first County Championship title in their 91-year history. Heavy rain meant that only seven overs were possible on the first day but, on the second morning, the sun came out and Hampshire’s seamers, Derek Shackleton and Malcolm Heath, wreaked havoc on a pitch which had turned into a batsman’s nightmare.

After 65 minutes, Derbyshire were 35 for six. After 119 minutes, they were all out for 74. When Hampshire replied, they fared even worse. Opener Roy Marshall, their brilliant West Indian stroke-maker, took guard at 12.46pm. Little over an hour later, the whole team were back in the Burton pavilion.

Marshall was caught behind by Dawkes off Harold Rhodes’s seventh ball. Five balls later, Rhodes bowled Gray and, off the third ball of Jackson’s next over, Pitman was run out – 7 for three. In Rhodes’s next over, Barnard was caught at short leg and, just before lunch, Jackson bowled Horton to reduce Hampshire to 17 for five.

Immediately after the break, Charlie Lee held a superb catch to dismiss Ingleby-Mackenzie off Rhodes – the Hants’ skipper had cried out: “For God’s sake, somebody catch the bloody thing!” – and with the wicket now absolutely unplayable, Jackson mopped up the last four wickets in nine balls.

The Championship leaders were all out for 23 runs, in 68 minutes. When Derbyshire began again, openers Lee and Frank Brailsford added a hurried 21 before the effects of the roller wore off and wickets again began to tumble. Skipper Donald Carr joined all-rounder Derek Morgan and the pair put on 54 in only 39 minutes – easily the best stand of the match – with Morgan’s eventual 46 all the more remarkable for the fact that one ball from Shackleton reared up off a length and gashed his temple.

After tea, Derbyshire’s remaining six wickets fell for only three runs and they were all out for 107, leaving Hampshire to score an unlikely 159 for victory. Hampshire began their second innings at exactly 5.30pm. Just 21 minutes later, they were 13 for three. Jackson dismissed Marshall with his fifth ball and Rhodes got rid of Gray and Pitman.

At 6.03pm Horton’s stumps were wrecked by Jackson – 23 for four. Another 18 minutes later, Rhodes bowled Ingleby-Mackenzie and it was 32 for five. At 6.50pm, Barnard, who had stayed for almost an hour for his 16, was caught by Carr off Jackson – 45 for six. Jackson had Sainsbury caught behind at 7.01pm and, with Hampshire 46 for seven, Derbyshire claimed the extra half-hour.

Morgan came on – the first bowling change of the match – and took the last three wickets for four runs in 5.3 overs. At 7.13pm, Hampshire were all out for 55, beaten by 103 runs. Not since 1880, when MCC beat Oxford University, had so many wickets, 39, fallen in a single day’s play.

Hampshire had been dismissed twice for lower totals than ever before against Derbyshire. The 3,000 crowd had seen the lowest total ever recorded against Derbyshire and the second lowest in England by a first-class side since before the Second World War (the previous lowest had been by Derbyshire themselves, in 1939, when Yorkshire bowled them out for 20). And the match had seen the lowest aggregate for two completed innings ever made against Derbyshire.

Ingleby-Mackenzie said later that his mistake led to Derbyshire’s victory. He put them in because he thought the wicket would suit Hampshire’s seamers and, indeed, Shackleton (seven for 88) and Heath (13 for 87) did not let him down.

But Derbyshire had out-batted Hampshire in almost identical conditions, while Jackson and Rhodes had surpassed even Hampshire’s bowling. Rhodes returned match figures of seven for 41. Jackson had taken nine for 26. Hampshire had good reason to remember Les Jackson in 1958. In the final match of the season, at Bournemouth, he denied them the Championship with match figures of 11 for 65.

Yet how many more wickets would Jackson have taken had he not missed several matches that year? A groin strain, suffered early in the season, saw him sit out six games. Actually, the injury might have helped Jackson, who had to cut down his pace and rely even more on guile.

That year saw Jackson’s partner, Cliff Gladwin, retire after taking 1,536 wickets for Derbyshire in a career that lost six years to the Second World War. But the man from Whitwell Colliery carried on. Jackson took a further 140 wickets in 1959, then 160 at 13.61 in 1960.

When an injury to Lancashire’s Brian Statham led to the England recall of 40-year-old Jackson in July 1961, most commentators regarded it as a shock.

But, to followers of Derbyshire cricket, the only surprise was that Jackson had not been a regular member of the England side since his international debut – and hitherto his only Test match – 12 years earlier. Essex and England star Trevor Bailey once wrote that professionals around the country were aghast when John Warr, of Cambridge University and Middlesex, was preferred to Jackson, a mere miner, for the 1950-51 Test series in Australia.

One journalist who shared those feelings was a man who possessed the highest qualifications for judging a fast bowler. Ray Lindwall, the great Aussie paceman of the post-war period, was covering the tour for a national newspaper.

After rain ruined the Australians’ visit to Chesterfield in early May 1961 – only 22 overs were possible but Jackson still returned figures of 10-7-9-1 – Lindwall wrote: “In 1948, Sir Donald Bradman reckoned Les Jackson the best bowler we met. As every English Test team was announced, we used to look for his name. But it was never there. “Yesterday, the same Jackson was troubling a new batch of Australians... he is 40 now... but, in yesterday’s conditions he looked as good as ever. “...But why has he played for England only once? I spent an hour in the rain yesterday trying to list the bowlers good enough to keep Jackson out of the team in his prime days. It was an impossible job.”

Ironically, as in 1958, Jackson was to endure a dreadful start to that 1961 season. After being hit on the ankle by Kent’s David Sayer in the first Championship match, the fast bowler missed several games.

Against Leicestershire, at Derby, in early July, however, he took the 1,500th wicket of his career. It was during that match that England came calling again. In the 1961 Headingly Test, he took four Australian wickets for 83 runs and, although Fred Trueman returned 11 for 88 in the match, England’s Ted Dexter felt that the home victory was just as much due to Jackson’s accuracy.

In 1962, Jackson, at the age of 41, sent down 1,000 overs and took 105 wickets. For Derbyshire, he took 100 wickets in a season 10 times, five or more in an innings 114 times and 10 or more in a match on 20 occasions. There were two hat-tricks, both against Worcestershire. In the 1958 match at Kidderminster, wicketkeeper George Dawkes caught all three batsmen.

Les Jackson retired from Derbyshire in 1963 but continued in league cricket until 1970. He then worked as a chauffeur for the NCB before retiring in 1982, after which he concentrated on growing vegetables, many of which he would give to his fellow pensioners. When he could no longer maintain his allotment, he took up dancing and also studied local history. He was an active member of his local Methodist chapel.

His wife Norma, whom he married in 1942, died in 1991. They had one daughter. A generally quiet man, he was roused to anger at least once. On the boat going out to India for a Commonwealth tour in 1950, when the Warwickshire player Dick Spooner made a disparaging comment about coal miners, Jackson reportedly threatened to dump him in the sea.

Les Jackson died at Chesterfield on April 25, 2007, aged 86. His former Derbyshire captain, Donald Carr, summed him up: “I remember in the dressing room once, after a long, hard day in the field, I saw a dark stain on his sock. “It was blood from a blister that had burst earlier in the day. I asked why on earth he hadn’t told me and he replied, ‘Well skipper, you asked me to bowl – so I bowled’. “What more could any captain want from a player?”

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