James Charles Laker (9 February 1922 – 23 April 1986) was an English professional cricketer. A right-arm off break bowler, Laker is generally regarded as one of the greatest spin bowlers in cricket history.
Laker played for Surrey County Cricket Club from 1946 to 1959 and represented England in 46 Test matches. In 1956, he achieved a still-unequalled world record when he took nineteen (of a maximum twenty) wickets in a Test match at Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester, enabling England to defeat Australia in what has become known as "Laker's Match". At club level, he formed a formidable spin partnership with Tony Lock, who was a left-arm orthodox spinner, and they played a key part in the success of the Surrey team through the 1950s including seven consecutive County Championship titles from 1952 to 1958. Laker batted right-handed as a useful tail-ender who scored two first-class centuries. He was considered a good fielder, especially in the gully position.
For his achievements in 1951, Laker was selected by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (Wisden) as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in its 1952 edition. He was selected as the New Zealand Cricket Almanack Player of the Year in 1952 after playing for Auckland in the 1951–52 season. In 1956, his Surrey benefit season realised £11,086 (£193,927 in 2021 terms) and, at the end of that year, he was voted "BBC Sports Personality of the Year", the first cricketer to win the award. He later worked for BBC Sport as a cricket commentator in its outside broadcast transmissions.
Jim Laker was born on 9 February 1922 in Shipley, near Bradford, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was raised by his mother Ellen Kane, a schoolteacher, and had four sisters. His father, a stonemason called Charles Laker, had deserted the family when Jim was two years old. Laker began playing cricket at a very early age. His mother was a lifelong enthusiast of the game, and, throughout his childhood, he played cricket continuously with her full encouragement. She used to make his sisters bowl to him because she was convinced he had the makings of a batsman.
In the years around 1930, Ellen was employed at Frizinghall Council School in Bradford, which Laker attended until 1932. He won a grammar school scholarship which entitled him to a free place at the Salts High School in nearby Saltaire. About that time, Ellen took up with a new partner called Bert Jordan and the family moved to Baildon, which is near Saltaire. This was a sound relationship, and Laker was able to enjoy a settled home life through his senior school years from September 1932 for seven years. He 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 also as a fast bowler.
In March 1938, aged 16, Laker was invited to attend special coaching by Yorkshire County Cricket Club in their winter shed at Headingley. He recalled his mother taking him to buy new cricket gear at Herbert Sutcliffe's shop in Leeds. He said the sacrifice she made was "frightening to contemplate" but she was determined to see him succeed as a cricketer. Yorkshire's coaching sessions were run by the former county batsman Benny Wilson, who was the first to show Laker how to spin the ball and encourage him to develop the skill. Although Wilson ran the teenage coaching classes, Laker was also coached by former Yorkshire players George Hirst, Maurice Leyland, Emmott Robinson and Alfred Wormald.
Yorkshire recommended him to join Saltaire Cricket Club, who played in the Bradford League, and he made his debut for them at their Roberts Park ground against Baildon, his local club. He played for Saltaire for three seasons, from 1938 to 1940, on one occasion scoring a century. In the 1938 season, his last at school, he played for Salts HS on Saturday morning and for Saltaire CC in the afternoon. Laker still thought of himself as a batsman and his contemporary Ronnie Burnet, who became Yorkshire's captain in the late 1950s, recalled that Laker bowled a mixed bag of "fast off-cutters-cum-spinners" before the Second World War. Charlie Lee, one of Laker's Saltaire team-mates, had a similar recollection saying that "Jim bowled all sorts of stuff and generally enjoyed himself without ever appearing to have the makings of a great bowler".
Army service and move to Surrey
Laker left school in February 1939 and obtained full-time employment at Barclays Bank in Bradford city centre, working a nine-hour day for £5 a month (£228 in 2021 terms). In early 1941, now aged 19, he volunteered for active service and joined the Army. He went to Leicestershire for infantry training and was then posted to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), serving in Palestine and Cairo until 1945, although he was never involved in front line fighting.
While Laker had done enough at Saltaire to be well remembered there, his cricketing career really gathered pace and took off while he was with the RAOC in Egypt. Playing on coconut matting wickets in inter-service matches, he decided to develop the off spin technique he had been taught by Benny Wilson. He recalled that, "to my utter amazement", he could turn the ball "quite prodigiously" on the matting strips. John Arlott later wrote that English cricketers in Egypt were writing home and talking about "a Yorkshire lad who could bowl off spin like a master". In 1943, Laker went to Alexandria to play for the RAOC against an RAF team and took five wickets for ten runs including a hat-trick. In 1944, he played against a South African Air Force XI, scored a century and then took six wickets for ten runs. In these matches, he encountered several top-class players including Norman Yardley, Peter Smith, Bert Sutcliffe, Ron Aspinall, Dudley Nourse and Arthur McIntyre.
Laker returned to England on leave in early 1945. Soon afterwards, his mother died of a heart attack. She left him an estate worth £1,000, which was fairly substantial at the time (£30,135 in 2021 terms). Bert Jordan had died during the war and, all his sisters having married and moved on, his northern roots were broken and he no longer had any pressing reason to return to Bradford. He was able to keep his options open when his military service ended. He had to return to Egypt but was then repatriated in summer 1945 with a year of service still to perform before demobilisation. He 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. This was meant to be a temporary arrangement but Laker ended up living with the Harris family for over five years, until he was due to get married himself.
Despite being on Yorkshire's books, Laker's circumstances after the end of the war led almost inevitably to his being approached by Surrey County Cricket Club. While he was resident with the Harrises at Forest Hill, he continued to play for service teams and, in March 1946, he joined Catford Cricket Club. Some impressive performances for Catford, including ten for 21 against Bromley, were noted by Andrew Kempton, Catford's club president, who was a member of the county club. Kempton knew Andy Sandham, the former England opening batsman who was Surrey's coach in 1946, and recommended Laker. Sandham invited Laker for a trial at The Oval. Soon afterwards, on 17 July, Laker made his first-class debut when Surrey hosted a Combined Services XI, whom they defeated by six wickets. Laker had the creditable figures of three for 78 and three for 43. He was still in the RAOC but was demobilised in August.
One of his options was a permanent career in the Regular Army, perhaps even a commission. He considered a return to banking and asked Barclays if they would reinstate him and transfer him to a London branch. They agreed but, as Fred Robinson, one of Laker's old school friends, later told biographer Alan Hill, "neither of those ventures ever really came within his considerations". As soon as Laker was demobbed, Surrey offered him a professional contract, subject to Yorkshire's approval. Yorkshire agreed to his release and he signed for Surrey on terms of £6 a week in winter (£152 in 2021 terms), augmented by match fees in summer. Laker played in two more first-class matches at the end of the 1946 season. Only seventeen months later, in January 1948, he made his Test debut for England at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados.