ENG v AUS AVERAGES
	BATTING	BOWLING
	Matches: 15	Balls: 4010
	Innings: 23	Maidens: 204
	Not outs: 4	Runs: 1444
	Runs: 277	Wickets: 79
	High score: 63	Average: 18.28
	Average: 14.58	Best: 10-53
	Stats shown are from all completed Tests and one-day internationals

Jim Laker was one of the finest off-spinners in the history of cricket - if not the finest.

He was also one of the principal architects of Surrey’s great team which won the County Championship in seven successive seasons, (1952-1958).

A Yorkshire exile, he forged a formidable partnership with spin-twin Tony Lock.

Laker made his debut for Surrey in 1946, having discovered an ability to turn the ball quite prodigiously on coconut matting strips with the Army in the Middle East during the War.

He first played for England in the West Indies in 1947-48 and was the most successful bowler on the tour in both the Tests and first-class games.

He was, however, never a regular in the side in the ensuing years, perhaps because of the punishment he took from the all-conquering Australian side of 1948.

In 1950, in the Test Trial on a rain-damaged track at Bradford, he took 8-2 in 14 overs, 12 of which were maidens. It showed a destroying vein that was to distinguish subsequent performances.

His annus mirabilis was in 1956 - it is now enshrined in cricket folklore. In that summer he took 63 Australian wickets, including 46 at 9.60 each in the Tests.

At Old Trafford he created a record that will probably never be broken, taking 19 wickets for 90 - including all 10 in the second innings.

In that year, he also he took 10-88 in an innings for Surrey against the Australians at the Oval.

Laker’s victims were seemingly paralysed, likened to ‘rabbits caught in car headlights, instinctively knowing they were about to be slaughtered’.

His bowling had a mesmeric quality, such was his accuracy. He was though, never mechanical but steady with an apparently infinite number of subtle variations at his disposal.

He had a short-stepping approach to the wicket - altering the number of paces to surprise - and a flighted delivery of full length with sometimes a late, puzzling dip which often caused the ball to drop shorter than the batsman expected.

It was all designed to deceive and rarely visible at spectator-distance.

To watch a class batsman have to play an over of apparently identical balls in six different ways indicated the range of Laker’s resources.

In South Africa (1956-57) and Australia (1958-59) he, unsurprisingly, did not reek the same devastation as in 1956, but met with fair success.

An arthritic top-finger joint, the result of years of seeking purchase for spin, led to his retirement, although after leaving Surrey in 1959, he made sporadic appearances for Essex between 1962 and 64.

His yield in 46 Test matches was 193 wicket at 29.24; in all first-class cricket 1944 at 18.41.

A forthright autobiography ‘Over to Me’ which, to those who did not know him, belied his impassive, nonchalant demeanour, landed him in hot water, both at The Oval and Lords.

In time, all was forgiven and Laker later became a television cricket commentator, which gave ample opportunity for his dry, laconic humour.