Jack Iddon

John ("Jack") Iddon (8 January 1902 in Mawdesley, Croston, near Chorley, Lancashire – 17 April 1946 in Madeley, Staffordshire) was an English cricketer who played in five Tests in 1935.

Jack Iddon was a right-handed middle-order batsman who hit the ball hard and a slow left-arm bowler who achieved a lot of turn on wearing pitches. He was an integral part of successful Lancashire teams from 1926 to 1939, passing 1,000 runs in a season 13 times – every year except 1927 – and going on to 2,381 runs in 1934.

His best bowling season was 1932 when he took 80 wickets. In later years, he was inclined to be expensive and bowled less, but his best bowling performance of 9 for 42 in an innings in the Roses match against Yorkshire came in 1937, a season when he took only 28 wickets in all matches.

Iddon's Test cricket was confined to the 1934-35 tour to the West Indies, when he played in all four Test matches, and one match against the South African cricket team in 1935. In the Caribbean, he came second in the England batting averages despite never batting higher than No 7 in any innings; with George Paine and Eric Hollies in the side, his opportunities for bowling were limited to just seven overs. In the first match of the 1935 series, he again batted at No 7, scored 29 and bowled four overs for three runs. But he was dropped and never regained a Test place.

Iddon played for Lancashire in a couple of the non-first-class matches arranged after the end of the Second World War in Europe in 1945, but was not intending to resume full-time cricket in 1946, though the county hoped he would appear on occasion as an amateur and had appointed him team captain. He was working as a technical representative for a company making brake linings in Manchester, and he was on his way home from a business meeting at Rolls-Royce in Crewe when he was killed in a road accident just before the start of the 1946 season.[1]