Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

14 Chapter One An exceedingly slow bowler In August 1938 Johnny Lawrence was commissioned to bowl at Leonard Hutton, the great but at the time still aspiring Yorkshire and England batsman after Hutton had recovered from injury; to give Hutton some practice against leg spin before Hutton would return to the international fray and have to face the great leg-spin bowler Bill O’Reilly of Australia in the final Test Match of that season at the Oval. He bowled at Hutton for two whole days on Herbert Sutcliffe’s artificial (concrete) strip in his back garden at Woodlands, Pudsey. One source told me that Johnny was asked to bowl his leg-spinners in the style of O’Reilly. Given that O’Reilly was probably the fastest of all the great leg- spinners (besides S.F. Barnes who is seen in this category by Justin Parkinson!) – and that Johnny was to become perhaps the slowest – the mind boggles slightly! Whether – and to what extent – he could actually mimic O’Reilly must remain a mystery but he certainly would have been able to bowl his spinners quicker than his usual style. Hutton had probably faced little leg spin bowling in Test matches at this stage in his career though most counties did have leg spinners and he wouldn’t have faced O’Reilly and this is why some practice was urgently needed. Yet he would be practising against someone who up to this time had never even played first class cricket. All we can say is that Johnny must have done something right in helping Hutton’s preparations. When that match came, Hutton not only neutralised that esteemed bowler and all the other Australian bowlers in that Test Match – he proceeded to reach a then world record score of 364 and gave England the win they needed not to lose a third successive series to Australia even though the Ashes were beyond their reach. As a match bowler however Johnny was from the earliest