Famous Cricketers No 91 - J.C.Laker

him take all nineteen wickets, enough to fill both the cricket and football grounds at Old Trafford if all the claims were true. In that 1956 series Laker took a staggering 46 wickets at an average of 9.60. Only the great S.F.Barnes, with 49 wickets in the Test Series against South Africa in 1913/14 has ever wreaked more havoc upon opponents and even Barnes never managed to take nineteen wickets in a Test. Laker had also taken ten wickets for 88 runs earlier in the season playing for Surrey against the Australians. The only other bowler to take ten wickets in an innings against an Australian touring teamwas E.Barratt who took ten for 43 for the Players against the 1878 team. Laker is the only man to take all-ten twice against them. So it is no wonder that Australian batsmen were out for revenge on their own wickets in 1958/59 but Laker more than held his own in that series, too, taking fifteen wickets at 21.20 to prove what a great bowler he was in all conditions. This despite having an arthritic spinning finger which troubled him throughout the tour and prevented him from taking part in the Adelaide Test. For Surrey Laker took 1395 wickets between 1946 and 1959. He was an integral part of the great Surrey team that won seven consecutive County Championship titles between 1952 and 1958 and shared the title with Lancashire in 1950. But, lest it be thought that he benefitted from playing on pitches at Kennington Oval tailor made for spinners, I should point out that his wickets per match ratio for the 1952 to 1958 period was actually better on away pitches. He certainly benefited from the quality of his fellow bowlers on the Surrey team, A.V.Bedser, P.J.Loader and G.A.R.Lock were all playing during this period and there was fine support bowling from W.S.Surridge and E.A.Bedser. His most successfuly, statistically, matches for Surrey were against MCC in 1954 when he took fifteen for 97 in the match and twelve wickets for 78 for Surrey against Sussex in 1958 at Hove. He took twelve wickets in a match on three other occasions. In May 1951 he took sixty wickets at an average of 13.53 and in July 1950 he took fifty five at 13.80. He was probably just as proud of the two hundreds he scored, against Gloucestershire at Kennington Oval in 1954 and against Cambridge University at Guildford in 1949. Against Kent at Kennington Oval in 1948 he was unfortunate enough to be run out on 99. We should not leave this brief review of his career without mentioning the astonishing eight wickets for 2 runs that he took for England against The Rest in the Test Trial at Park Avenue, Bradford in 1950. He always claimed that he allowed Eric Bedser to score one of these runs to get off the mark! Nor should we forget the 271 catches that he took in his career, many of them off his own bowling. Laker was discarded too quickly by England after the 1958/59 Australian tour. He was still the best off-spin bowler in the country as Gloucestershire found out to their cost when, on a spinner’s wicket prepared for their match against Surrey at Gloucester, their two off-spinners J.B.Mortimore and D.A.Allen were out-bowled by Laker who took eleven wickets for 80 in the match. The 1959 season ended Laker’s association with Surrey although he was to return to the first-class game as an amateur for Essex from 1962 to 1964 taking a further 111 wickets at an average of 21.32. In 1962 he took thirteen wickets for 159 runs in the Championship match against Kent at Dover. Laker ruffled a few feathers late in his career. A dispute with his Surrey and England captain, Peter May who accused Laker of not trying in a match against Kent, led to Laker initially refusing to tour Australia in 1958/59. That breach was smoothed over but a more serious affair occured in 1960 when Laker wrote a book Over to Me in which he criticised, amongst other things, the way that Surrey treated their professional players and the decision of MCC to send two managers on the 1958/59 Australian tour. The book caused something of a stir at the time and led to the withdrawl of Laker’s Surrey and MCC memberships. Happily these were eventually fully restored to him. 5