Famous Cricketers No 91 - J.C.Laker

JAMES CHARLES LAKER James Charles Laker was born at 36 Norwood Road, Shipley, Yorkshire on 9th February 1922, the son of Charles Henry and Ellen Laker. He was the second of their offspring, a sister, Susie, having been born six years earlier. The marriage of Charles and Ellen was not destined to last. Charles deserted the family home in 1924 and the two-year-old, Jim, was informed and believed that his father had died. In his own later writings Jim states that he has no recollections whatever of his father and had never even seen his photograph. In the early 1980s, a former cricketing colleague, Peter Parfitt, discovered Charles Laker’s grave in the town of Barnoldswick. A stonemason, he had died in 1931, aged only 54, his health undermined by exposure to dust and chippings. Jim was past his sixtieth birthday when Parfitt showed him the grave of the father he never knew. It is a sad part of the Laker story. Jim Laker was educated at Frizinghall Council School and, later, at Salts High School in Saltaire, a school at which he later said that he had spent seven of the happiest years of his life. He enjoyed the arts subjects, especially English Language, and in 1938 he was successful in the Northern Universities School Certificate, emerging with five credit passes. In school cricket he was primarily a batsman and fast bowler. In one House match in 1937 the fifteen-year-old Laker took six wickets for no runs as the opposition were tumbled out for just 1 run. One of Laker’s earliest tutors in the game was Harry Dolphin, a nephew of Arthur Dolphin the old Yorkshire wicket-keeper. Whilst still at school, Laker started an association with the Saltaire Cricket Club, playing in the Bradford Cricket League. He would often play a school match on a Saturday morning and a league match in the afternoon. Over the years he was to play fifty matches for Saltaire scoring 526 runs, including one century and taking 79 wickets. By his own admission he was no budding world-beater at this stage of his career. In March 1938 he received a letter from the Yorkshire Secretary, Mr Nash, inviting him to attend the indoor school at Headingley. There he came under the tutorship of, among others, Benny Wilson who had played for Yorkshire before the First World War. Wilson advised Laker to try to bowl off-spin, showing him the correct grip and method. Had the Second World War not intervened Laker might well have settled for a career in banking, a job that his mother considered much more secure than one in cricket. He spent two years working for Barclays Bank in Bradford. In 1941, at the age of 19, he volunteered for army service and was posted to the Middle East. There, with no manuals and no coaches, he practiced his new off-spin bowling finding that, on the coconut matting pitches that he encountered there, he could turn the ball a prodigious distance. He started taking wickets regularly, lots of them. In 1943 he took fifty at an average of 7 runs apiece. In 1944, in a match against the South African Air Force, he opened the batting and was out last for 106. He then proceeded to take six wickets for 10 runs as the S.A.A.F. side were bowled out for 29. In another game he took seven wickets for just 8 runs. In yet another he dismissed the formidable South African Test batsman, Dudley Nourse, who later said he thought that Laker was an England cricketer in the making. In 1944 Laker took 221 wickets (average 5.7) and scored 960 runs. In the course of these wartime games he played with or against such fine players as N.W.D.Yardley, A.D.Nourse, H.E.Dollery, T.P.B.Smith, A.W.Wellard, G.L.Berry, G.M.Emmett, and the New Zealanders Bert Sutcliffe and T.L.Pritchard. He looked fully at home in such exalted company. Sadly, in 1945, Jim’s mother died at the age of 66. Jim, himself, managed to obtain a transfer from the army to the War Office who posted him to Catford. Yorkshire did not seem very enthusiastic about taking him onto their books. Indeed when a fellow serviceman from Shipley wrote to the Club recommending Jim Laker as “a most promising cricketer”, he was told abruptly that Yorkshire were 3