James Charles Laker was an English professional cricketer who played for Surrey County Cricket Club from 1946 to 1959 and represented England in 46 Test matches.
89 Facts About Jim Laker
2.
Jim Laker was born in Shipley, West Riding of Yorkshire, and died in Wimbledon, London.
3.
Jim Laker batted right-handed as a useful tail-ender who scored two first-class centuries.
4.
Jim Laker was considered a good fielder, especially in the gully position.
5.
Jim Laker later worked for BBC Sport as a cricket commentator in its outside broadcast transmissions.
6.
Jim Laker was born on 9 February 1922 in Shipley, near Bradford, which was then in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
7.
Jim Laker was raised by his mother Ellen Kane, a schoolteacher, and had four sisters.
8.
Jim Laker's mother was a lifelong enthusiast of the game, and, throughout his childhood, he played cricket continuously with her full encouragement.
9.
Jim Laker used to make his sisters bowl to him because she was convinced he had the makings of a batsman.
10.
Jim Laker said later that he was very happy at Salts and he became a regular member of the school cricket team, playing primarily as a batsman but as a fast bowler.
11.
In March 1938, aged 16, Jim Laker was invited to attend special coaching by Yorkshire County Cricket Club in their winter shed at Headingley.
12.
Jim Laker recalled his mother taking him to buy new cricket gear at Herbert Sutcliffe's shop in Leeds.
13.
Jim Laker said the sacrifice she made was "frightening to contemplate" but she was determined to see him succeed as a cricketer.
14.
Jim Laker played for Saltaire for three seasons, from 1938 to 1940, on one occasion scoring a century.
15.
Jim Laker still thought of himself as a batsman and his contemporary Ronnie Burnet, who became Yorkshire's captain in the late 1950s, recalled that Jim Laker bowled a mixed bag of "fast off-cutters-cum-spinners" before the Second World War.
16.
Jim Laker went to Leicestershire for infantry training and was then posted to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, serving in Palestine and Cairo until 1945, although he was never involved in front line fighting.
17.
Jim Laker recalled that, "to my utter amazement", he could turn the ball "quite prodigiously" on the matting strips.
18.
In 1943, Jim Laker went to Alexandria to play for the RAOC against an RAF team and took five wickets for ten runs including a hat-trick.
19.
Jim Laker was able to keep his options open when his military service ended.
20.
Jim Laker had to return to Egypt but was then repatriated in summer 1945 with a year of service still to perform before demobilisation.
21.
Jim Laker was posted to the War Office itself in central London and was invited by an army friend called Colin Harris to lodge with his family in Forest Hill, a couple of miles from Catford.
22.
Jim Laker had the creditable figures of three for 78 and three for 43.
23.
Jim Laker considered a return to banking and asked Barclays if they would reinstate him and transfer him to a London branch.
24.
Jim Laker played in two more first-class matches at the end of the 1946 season.
25.
Jim Laker bowled well at county level in 1947, taking 79 wickets and topping the Surrey bowling averages.
26.
Jim Laker took eight wickets in the match, including a second innings hat-trick.
27.
Jim Laker was described as specialising in off breaks, "fielding smartly" in the gully and showing promise as a batsman.
28.
Jim Laker played in four Tests and, on debut, took seven for 103 in the first innings of the first Test.
29.
Playfair said Jim Laker was the only player who "really justified his selection".
30.
Wisden said Jim Laker "excelled" and was "undoubtedly the find of the tour", despite problems with an abdominal injury.
31.
Jim Laker accepted but was then astonished when Holdsworth tried to persuade him to return and play for Yorkshire.
32.
Jim Laker reported back that Laker was content where he was and did not wish to play for Yorkshire.
33.
In 1949, Jim Laker played in only one of the four Tests against New Zealand even though he took 122 wickets in the season.
34.
In 1950, Jim Laker took eight wickets for only two runs in an innings in a Test trial at Bradford Park Avenue when playing for England against "The Rest".
35.
Jim Laker set an attacking leg side field and bowled around the wicket, concentrating on line and length with minimal flight, which gave the batsmen no time to come forward to the pitch of the ball.
36.
Unfortunately, Jim Laker injured his hand when batting in the Test, which impaired his bowling.
37.
Jim Laker took only one wicket in the match, which England won, and the selectors decided to leave him out of the team thereafter.
38.
Jim Laker later recalled one incident when a huge rat ran across the field and onto the pitch just as he was about to bowl.
39.
Jim Laker stopped and was then astonished to see a kite hawk swoop down, seize the rat in its talons and fly away with it.
40.
Jim Laker was used to pigeons on the field at The Oval and he was so surprised by this that, when he did bowl the next ball, it bounced twice and was struck to the boundary.
41.
Jim Laker took 149 wickets that season and played in two of the five Tests against South Africa.
42.
Jim Laker played in four matches for Auckland, taking 24 wickets.
43.
In 1952, the season in which Surrey won the first of their seven consecutive County Championship titles, Jim Laker played in four Tests against India.
44.
Jim Laker played in one Test against South Africa in 1955.
45.
Jim Laker finally secured his Test place in 1956 and took part in all five Tests against Australia.
46.
Jim Laker took all ten wickets in an innings for Surrey against the Australians.
47.
Jim Laker's effort led to him being awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award in 1956, the first cricketer to win the award.
48.
Jim Laker began from the Warwick Road End but did not take a wicket until he switched to the Stretford End.
49.
Lock took the wicket of Jim Laker Burke, caught by Colin Cowdrey at slip, with the first ball bowled after tea and England dominated from then on.
50.
Jim Laker terminated the innings by taking the last seven wickets for only eight runs in just 22 deliveries.
51.
Jim Laker's figures were nine for 37 while Lock's were one for 37.
52.
The pitch was taking prodigious spin after tea and Australia's hopes faded when Jim Laker dismissed McDonald with the second ball of the evening session.
53.
At 17:27, with just over an hour to go, Jim Laker bowled to Len Maddocks and appealed for leg before wicket.
54.
Maddocks was given out and Jim Laker had taken all ten wickets for 53 runs to give England victory.
55.
Barnes remains the only bowler other than Jim Laker to take seventeen in a Test match.
56.
Jim Laker is the only bowler to have taken more than eighteen wickets in a first-class match.
57.
Jim Laker took fifty wickets, which was his career-best tally in an overseas season.
58.
Jim Laker played in four Tests against the West Indies in 1957 and four against New Zealand in 1958.
59.
Jim Laker bowled a total of 54 overs in the match and that immediately followed a haul of 63 overs in a match against Glamorgan at Swansea, which Surrey won.
60.
Jim Laker was not selected by England for the series against India in 1959.
61.
Surrey lost by four wickets and Jim Laker took only one wicket.
62.
In 1962, Jim Laker was "persuaded" out of retirement by his old England team-mate Trevor Bailey and, as an amateur, he played in thirty matches for Essex.
63.
Jim Laker remained a formidable bowler through 1962 and 1963, and twice won matches with ten-wicket hauls.
64.
Jim Laker was less effective in the 1964 season, after which he retired for good.
65.
Jim Laker made his first-class debut on 17 July 1946, playing for Surrey against the Combined Services XI at The Oval.
66.
Jim Laker played in 450 first-class matches and took a total of 1,944 wickets.
67.
Jim Laker captured five wickets in an innings on 127 occasions and ten wickets in a match 32 times.
68.
Jim Laker's best season average was an outstanding 14.23 in 1958, the last year of Surrey's run of seven titles, when he took 116 wickets.
69.
Jim Laker first took 100 wickets in a season in 1948 and achieved the target in eleven consecutive seasons to 1958.
70.
Jim Laker usually fielded in the gully position and held 271 career catches, with a best season performance in 1954 when he held 29 in as many matches.
71.
Jim Laker made his Test debut for England on 21 January 1948, playing against the West Indies at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown.
72.
Jim Laker played in 46 Tests and took 193 wickets at the average of 21.24.
73.
Jim Laker took five wickets in an innings nine times and ten in a match three times.
74.
Jim Laker scored 676 runs at 14.08 in Test matches, including two half-centuries with a highest score of 63 against Australia in 1948.
75.
Jim Laker described broken-time payments as "poppycock" because they were "payments on the side" that enabled amateurs to make more money than professionals; even so, he was not saying anything new as the issue pre-dated even the Grace brothers.
76.
Williams wrote that Jim Laker ruined his case through characteristic bluntness and by not fully understanding the reasons why amateurism existed, rightly or wrongly, in the first place.
77.
Ironically, Jim Laker did end up playing as an amateur when he came out of retirement to join Essex in 1962.
78.
Jim Laker's strength gave him the capability to undertake long spells of bowling.
79.
John Arlott once wrote that batsmen at the non-striking end "could hear the ball buzz" as Jim Laker imparted spin on to it.
80.
Sobers said that Jim Laker was the "undoubtedly the best off-spinner I ever saw" with Lance Gibbs not far behind.
81.
McIntyre himself said that, of the four, he had the greatest difficulty keeping wicket to Jim Laker who "spun the ball so viciously".
82.
Richie Benaud had noted their different characteristics in the way they appealed for a dismissal: "Jim Laker was apologetic, Lock a demander".
83.
Jim Laker had courted his fiancee Lilly for some years.
84.
Jim Laker was born in Vienna but, opposed to Nazism, she left Austria after the Anschluss and was in the Middle East when World War II began.
85.
Jim Laker joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in Cairo and met Laker when he was posted there with the RAOC.
86.
In July 1956, only three weeks before his record-breaking performance at Old Trafford, Jim Laker was Roy Plomley's guest on his Desert Island Discs radio programme.
87.
Jim Laker developed an interest in broadcasting and, after he retired from playing, became a highly regarded cricket commentator for ITV from 1966 to 1968 and for BBC Television from 1968 until his death in 1986.
88.
Jim Laker was still employed by the BBC when he died at the Parkside Clinic in Wimbledon, aged 64, on 23 April 1986.
89.
Jim Laker's body was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium and his ashes were scattered at The Oval.