Anniversary of Laker's Greatness

28 July 2010

This week sees the annual anniversary – this year the 54th – of the single greatest feat ever achieved by a Surrey player, the nineteen wickets in a match taken by Jim Laker at Old Trafford in 1956.

The achievement, the magnitude of which means it is unlikely to ever be equalled or bettered, came in the fourth Ashes test of Australia’s tour and led England to a magnificent victory of an innings and 170 runs as they won the historic urn by two games to one.

With three Surrey players – Laker, his spin partner Tony Lock and the great captain Peter May – making up the core of an excellent squad, the series will always be remembered as the backdrop for the greatest bowling achievement in the history of International cricket.

After May won the toss and opted to bat first, centuries from Worcestershire’s Peter Richardson and Sussex’s David Sheppard – alongside 80 from Kent great Colin Cowdrey lifted England to an eminently defendable total of 459 all out.

England’s seam attack of the fearsome Lancastrian Brian Statham and great son of Essex Trevor Bailey wasted no time in getting stuck into the Australian batsmen, bowling a combined ten overs for just ten runs before May chucked the ball to the Surrey pairing of Laker and Lock.

Laker took the first two wickets to fall – Colin McDonald and Ian Harvey – before Lock broke his duck by having Jim Burke caught by Cowdrey for 22. Little did the packed crowd realise that was the last wicket any England bowler other than Laker would take until the series moved to the Kennington Oval for the fifth and final Test a month later.

The two spinners continued to bowl in tandem for the remainder of the innings with Laker hoovering up the last seven Australian wickets to end the first innings with a scarcely believable 9/37.

Australia had been dismissed for 84 in 40.4 overs, a deficit of 375 and May wasted no time in enforcing the follow on.

Perhaps conscious of the way they had folded in the first innings, Australia went about their business with considerably more steel in the second innings. Again Statham and Bailey opened the innings – but again they were unable to find a way through McDonald and Burke.

Once again May turned to his Surrey spinners and the result has been clearly recorded in cricketing history books.

Although he had to bowl 35 more overs than he did the first innings, Laker this time succeeded in dismissing every single one of the Australian order – a feat that has only ever been achieved once since (by Anil Kumble in Delhi in February 1999).

Even after Kumble’s feat, Laker’s first innings figures of 9/37 remain the third best Test Match innings record in modern history, besting nine wicket efforts by modern greats such as Muttiah Muralitharan (twice), Sir Richard Hadlee, Abdul Qadir and Kapil Dev.

Over the course of the series, Laker averaged an extraordinary 9.6, taking 46 wickets for just 442 runs. If something even close to this is ever achieved again, it will be an incredible feat.