THE day before Remembrance Day, we hear of the sale of a remarkable copy of the 1941 Wisden – liberated from the library at Oflag V11B prisoner-of-war camp in Bavaria by former Durham County cricketer Keith Jackson.

Keith, held for five years, may best be remembered as the only bowler ever to bag the great West Indian Jeff Stollmeyer for a pair – 18,000 packed in Ashbrooke, Sunderland, in July 1950.

A second lieutenant in the DLI, he was captured in France in 1940, spending long hours of incarceration improving his knowledge of classical music and, presumably, with his head in the Cricketers’ Almanac.

“One can only suppose,” says a family note on the Wisden Auction site, “that it was stuffed into a haversack as something to wile away time during a long and arduous trip back to the UK across war-torn Europe.”

Keith Jackson was a Barnard Castle lad, attended Barney School, played cricket for Bishop Auckland, became a brewer with Nimmo’s at Castle Eden and, at 40, married Joan Nimmo, the boss’s daughter. Thereafter he played his cricket for Castle Eden, became a scratch golfer and a dab hand at bridge.

In 1948 he had taken 5-76 for Durham against the touring Australians – including the wickets of Neil Harvey, Don Tallon and Bill Brown – and also had a match return of 9-105 against Yorkshire II at Scarborough.

He died, aged 79, in 1997 – but that special Wisden, ex libris as probably they say at Barnard Caste School, has only just come to light. Its condition described as “reasonable”, it also survived Oflag V11B.

THE guide price for that unchained Wisden is £50 – the same, coincidentally, as a signed Tow Law Town match shirt going on eBay from the eternally unforgettable 1998 FA Vase final at Wembley. Said to be extra large, it’s thought to have been worn by Mickey Bailey.

THE Stollmeyer double notwithstanding, Keith Jackson didn’t even merit man of the match against the West Indies in 1950. That was Jackie Keeler, not the height of twopennorth of copper and known universally as Chip – as in Keiller’s Little Chip Marmalade.

Jackie, a colliery wages clerk from South Moor, near Stanley, hit a chanceless 135 from a bowling attack that included the formidable Sonny Ramadhin, prompting Clyde Walcott, another West Indian immortal, to suggest that Jackie must have been able to read the spinner.

“Could I hell, no one could,” Jackie once told the column. “If it was down the right-hand side it was his off-break and down the left-hand side it was his leg-break. If it was down the middle, I didn’t know what the hell it was.”

He’d made his Durham debut in 1942, run out first ball, was called up for naval duty and carried his bat in his hammock, even when in submarines. Demobbed, he turned down Hampshire’s contract offer.

“I’d had five years in the Navy. I wanted to be home,” said Jackie.

With Harry Bell against Yorkshire II, he shared a then record opening stand for Durham of 215; against the touring Indians in 1952 – Umrigar, Chowdhury, Roy – he hit 90 and 97.

“To tell you the truth, I was that knackered I was glad to get out,” he said. “I wasn’t bothered about centuries at all.”

A lovely and a very humble man, he died in October 2005.

STILL with former Durham County cricketers, the play about Colin Milburn – centred around his last desperate weeks staying at the North Briton pub in Aycliffe Village – is at the Riverside in Chester-le-Street tomorrow evening and at Burnopfield CC, Ollie’s home base, on Saturday.

The programme promises songs, anecdotes and a large gin and cola.

Called When the Eye Has Gone, supported by the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the one-man production is touring all 18 first class county grounds. Peter Chapman, once the Echo’s head librarian, caught it at Edgbaston on Monday.

Peter supposes that the play offers a fairly rounded view – as might be supposed of the great man – though there was a collective groan at the bit where Northants pinched him from under Warwickshire noses.

“It’ll be interesting to hear how it goes down in Burnopfield – his mother and father feature in perhaps not the most sympathetic light,” he adds.

Backtrack will be there tomorrow night. More next week.

….and finally, the 10 teams in last week’s FA Cup first round who’d previously won the competition (Backtrack, November 3) were Blackpool, Bolton Wanderers, Bradford City, Bury, Charlton, Coventry City, Notts County, Portsmouth, Sheffield United and Wimbledon.

Readers are today invited to suggest the football record which East Kilbride FC took from the mighty Ajax last Saturday.

Kilby or cure, the column returns next week.