The King of Pop was not the only Michael Jackson to pass away last week. Sad news reached me today that Mike Jackson, No 3 bat for the PG Wodehouse Society cricket team, lost his battle with lung cancer last Friday.
Regular readers will recall that I often play for and against the Wodehouse Soc, whose cricket team are called the Gold Bats after a 1904 novel by Wodehouse. Mike was a valuable member of the team, a fine batsman and talented footballer in his youth and a lovely man to have in the dressing room.
It helped that he could play cricket as well as anyone in the team, but Mike would have been in every XI regardless of talent because of his name. When Bob Miller, the Gold Bats captain, first met Mike, he was astonished to discover that he shared a name with one of Wodehouse's most famous characters, who made his debut in literature precisely a century ago.
Mike Jackson is the sidekick of Psmith, the monocle-wearing dandy, and one of the illustrious Jackson brothers, who are trained by a cricket pro called Saunders during their school holidays and go on to play county cricket. Mike, the youngest, is unable to go to Cambridge - and thence to the England team? - because of a collapse in the family finances so he has to take a job in a bank. In one memorable story, he bunks off work to go and play at Lord's because his brother's team is a man short. How could his namesake not be an automatic selection for the Gold Bats?
He had been ill for some time but although he did not feel strong enough to play in last year's charity match at Audley End between the Gold Bats and my Kirby Strollers side, Mike still came to umpire the fixture. I remember the last thing he said to me was after I took three wickets in that match: "What's happened to your game? You were hopeless last time I saw you bowl." Some days you get lucky; some days, alas, you receive the finger from the eternal umpire. Mike will be much missed.