Jim Laker, still the only man to take 19 wickets in a Test, was born in February 1922. After his death in 1986, this tribute, full of fascinating technical insight, was published in the 1987 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
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In the early 1950s Everest had not yet been tamed. It stood alone among the high places of the world. Now, more than thirty years later, its climbs are still the test for real mountaineers, but even as they prove the efficacy of their thermal underwear, Everest seems to have shrunk. Hillary and Tensing have been followed to the top.
Down below, in kinder, greener conditions, the underwear is not for keeping out the cold but for mopping up the sweat. Even so, on the cricket field, conditions of wind and wear, of dust and damp, still must be watched and taken into account.
There, however, Jim Laker’s achievement, nineteen wickets in a Test match, has not attracted followers. Nor may it ever be beaten. Twenty wickets in a match is still Everest, far more significant in a cricket context than any record for batting or even for all-round excellence. Laker’s nineteen looks less and less repeatable as the seasons pass.
It should not pass notice that in the second innings of that famous Old Trafford Test, Laker bowled 51 overs and two balls with hardly a break. Yet in all of the 1956 season he bowled only 959 overs: only because it was not uncommon for spin bowlers to break 1,000 or even 1,250 overs a session.
Laker’s spinning finger thickened with arthritis, noticeably so when compared with the same digit on the left hand, and from time to time, when confronted by these problems, he was, perhaps inevitably, not keen to fill the stock-bowling role as a Surrey match eased gently towards a draw. Like the voice of Callas, a spin bowler’s finger demanded judicious use.
No cricketer could have made an impression on the game as vividly as Laker without having the personality to deploy his talent. He might have gone to Surrey from Catford, but Jim Laker was the archetypal dry Yorkshireman. If his tongue could cut, his eye was keen. His humour depended on the detached observance of the passing scene, never better illustrated than in his story of the journey home after that Test, when he sat in a Lichfield pub alone and unrecognised whilst others celebrated what he had done. Nor were his years in banking wasted, for he invested shrewdly when he finally settled in Putney. After his brief flirtation with industry, commentating for television, together with his articles and books, kept him financially afloat. Cricket apart, he was not looking for the big one.
Not all cricketers travel contentedly through the rest of their lives. To all appearances Laker was one of the lucky ones. Perhaps an inner awareness of his stupendous achievement as a player, the bestest with the mostest, gave him lasting satisfaction. When he came back from his next winter tour in South Africa to pick up yet more awards, he found that the legislators had begun to interfere with the right of captains and bowlers to place their fielders at will. They have made it harder for anyone to repeat my success, he told one audience, and as so often in his cricketing judgment, Laker is likely to be right. When shall we look upon his like again?
