A comparatively unknown 24-year-old cricketer who came to England with Richie Benaud’s 1961 team made the strongest impact of any post-war Australian batsman on his initial tour. He was Wiliam Morris Lawry, a member of the Northcote Cricket Club in Melbourne and of the Victoria State eleven. As a Test left-handed opener he established himself as successor to Arthur Morris.
Bill Lawry was an adhesive opening batsman for Australia throughout the 1960s. After a fine first Ashes tour in 1961, he was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
It was ironical that this tall, lean young man with the sharp jaw, who stood 6ft 2in, bore the nickname “The Phantom” bestowed upon him when he first joined the Victoria team and his colleagues discovered his youthful addiction to a comic strip character of that name.
As he went from one triumph to another Lawry, with his slight crouch at the wicket, his long reach to kill the spin was very much there in the flesh in the eyes of the England bowlers.
That the summer was mostly fine after the first week did not detract from the left-hander’s glory. He hit a century in each of the two Tests that Australia won: 130 on the exacting ridge at Lord’s and 102 in the Test which decided the Ashes at Old Trafford after 74 in the first innings.
Lawry, the raw recruit, soon adapted himself to English pitches which he found slower than those at home but with more pronounced spin and cut. He had been sent to England as a promising opener – solid and with strokes developing. His sole major achievement had been 266 – after being dropped at 12 – in a punishing innings for Victoria against New South Wales in Sydney shortly before the Australian selectors chose the team for the tour.
Born in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury on February 11, 1937, Bill Lawry had no family background in big cricket. At the age of nine he took part in his first competition with Thornbury Presbyterian Church team; he spent three years in church cricket and also played for Preston Technical School.
The Australian district clubs set out to catch ’em young and when he was 12 Northcote claimed him in their fourth grade side where he stayed two seasons, then one in the third, one in the second and at 16 he was promoted to the first. Thus he had eight summers in the senior grade before he toured England.
After the Old Trafford Test, WE Bowes, a former England pace bowler, wrote that Lawry was one of the best players against fast bowling I have ever seen. In the later stages of the tour some staleness was evident and his batting lacked previous composure and colour, but the fact remained that the tall one’s batting did expand on his baptismal tour.
Returning to his own country, Lawry promptly became the Victoria captain. A popular character, modest, staunch and intelligent, he is a splendid team man.
Bill Lawry went on to captain Australia in the late 1960s and played in 67 Tests, hitting 5,234 runs at 47.15 with 13 hundreds.
