Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin: Masters of their Craft
ACS Book of the Week
Each week we spotlight a fascinating title from the vast collection catalogued in the Cricket Bibliography project, drawing on insightful (but not necessarily positive!) reviews from the archives of our journal. Today we bring you Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin: Masters of their Craft (2025) by John Shawcroft, reviewed by Douglas Miller and available right now via the ACS website.
The Lives in Cricket series is now over seventeen years old. As one who was involved in its conception and responsible for the series title, I have followed its fortunes closely. Replacing the Famous Cricketers, books which had lost much of their salience with the emergence of Cricket Archive, the new series was envisaged as catering not for the game’s stellar personalities but others worthy of being remembered for contributions at a slightly lower level. Over the years there have been many pertinent titles but, perhaps, too many focussing on obscure figures often drawn from the earliest days of the game. Many have been pleasantly written, others rather pedestrian. The original template of around 30,000 words has long been forgotten: this latest book is closer to 60,000.
In other respects, a book on Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin, as much a pair as Morecombe and Wise, conforms to the initial ideal for the series, albeit Jackson has been the subject of a well-received biography by Mike Carey. To a degree John Shawcroft’s book still falls into the familiar trap of plodding from match to match. Yet that is the nub of the story: day in, day out the pair went about their business. And the figures tell a powerful tale: Gladwin took 1,653 first-class wickets at 18.30, while Jackson narrowly outstripped him with 1,733 at 17.36. They may have enjoyed an era of low scores with pitch-covering and other regulations favouring bowlers, but such was their consistency that in no season across the 1950s did either bowler pay more than 20.86 for his wickets.
What makes this a better book than the run-of-the-mill titles is the author’s ability to write. Link this to an encyclopaedic knowledge of post-war Derbyshire cricket gathered at first hand – Shawcroft saw his first match as a ten-year-old in 1946 and later worked locally as a journalist – and the book becomes a compulsive read, albeit at times as much a history of Derbyshire as a biography of two of its players. Though, perhaps strangely, Shawcroft met Jackson only briefly and Gladwin not at all, he has made the most of his wide range of contacts, not least the late Donald Carr, the long-serving captain, and Edwin Smith, now 90 years old.
Gladwin’s Test career, with a tour to South Africa, comprised eight matches in which he took 15 wickets at 38. Mainly an in-swing bowler of medium pace, he had his chances but was perhaps a pale imitation of Alec Bedser, whereas heckles rise at the memory of the way Jackson was treated. A faster bowler with nip off the pitch and the ability to move the ball in both directions, he won his first Test cap in only his second season. He then waited twelve years before a recall in 1961 at the age of 40.
The widely accepted wisdom is that Jackson’s low arm and slingy action did not commend him to Gubby Allen, while his mining background contrasted unfavourably with that of the Eton-educated Allen. So John Warr, an undergraduate at Cambridge and already earning a reputation for being ‘a good egg’, was preferred for the 1950/51 tour of Australia. By modern standards the party was a couple of pace bowlers light with Berry and Hollies proving surplus as spinners.
Trueman and Statham would soon burst onto the scene, to be followed by Tyson, Loader and others. Yet those who really knew Jackson from first-hand experience felt he had a raw deal. Tom Graveney poured scorn on the theory that his later spells lacked menace, while Colin Cowdrey believed that even when Trueman and Statham were in their pomp an attack with Jackson in support could have been stronger. For matches at Lord’s he suggested the great pairing could have been broken up to make Jackson first choice, while Trueman himself told the author that others chosen ‘were not fit to lace Les’s boots.’
‘Well, there were some good bowlers around’ Jackson was happy to admit in later life, reflecting an equable temperament that marked his playing days. Cliff Gladwin, by contrast, carried his bowling figures in his head – and woe betide the fielder who dented them. But he, too, looks at his partner’s lack of international recognition. ‘A crime against cricket’ was his verdict.