Sixty years ago Jim Laker took 19 for 90 against Australia at Old Trafford. Huw Turbervill recalls that match with exclusive interviews he conducted with Doug Insole, Neil Harvey and Alan Davidson…
English cricket has almost become a barren wasteland for spin bowling. Yet 60 summers ago the Australian tourists were destroyed by an off-spinner, a diffident and modest Yorkshireman. Jim Laker recorded incredible figures in that five-Test series, taking 46 wickets at 9.60 runs apiece. That included his extraordinary, unparalleled 19 for 90 at Old Trafford, including, for the first time in a Test, 10 wickets in an innings. He also took another 17 in two matches for Surrey against the tourists, including all 10, again, on the first day of the match before the first Test. Ian Botham, in 1981, is the only Englishman who has had such a pivotal role in ensuring the Ashes remained with the hosts at the end of an English summer – and this was all in Laker’s benefit year.
Yet it was not an entirely one-man show. Sir Donald Bradman said the home side in that 1956 series was England’s best ever.
Colin Cowdrey, writing about Laker’s display in the Manchester Test, called him “the calm destroyer”.
Yet the off-spinner’s performances against Australia in the past had not been especially auspicious. While playing for MCC at Lord’s in 1948, he was struck for nine sixes. He was picked for the series that year, but his combined figures in three matches were 9 for 472. He fared better in 1953, taking 9 for 212 in the same number of Tests, and he combined strongly with fellow Surrey spinner Tony Lock, the slow left-armer, at The Oval in the finale in a hint of things to come. Laker was not picked for the 1954/55 tour to Australia, however, just as he had been overlooked in 1950/51.
A few factors were key to his 1956 success. Australia had been in decline since Bradman’s retirement in 1948, and they had become fallible against off-spin. England also, amid much controversy, prepared spin-friendly pitches, after a dry spring and damp summer, tailored to Laker and his sidekick. Lock chipped in with 15 wickets, including Laker’s missing one at Manchester. Galled at the time that he had been overshadowed, Lock later regretted denying Laker his perfect 20.
Laker’s control was remarkable, with fielders feeling able to stand perilously close, as Doug Insole, who played for England during the series, explained.
“People go mad whenever an off-spinner bowls a batsman through the gate, but it was a regular occurrence with Jim; it was his passport. He gave the ball a tremendous tweak. He achieved outward drift at the end of his flight; it would hit the ground and then spin sharply back. He did me as a matter of routine. He was deceptive. He never enthused openly at all. Even when he took that 10th wicket at Old Trafford, he just put his sweater over his shoulder and walked calmly off.”
Australia batsman Ian Craig said: “Jim was very quiet. He wasn’t an extrovert. He was a nice chap. He just went about his business. He was a real typical English county player. They were tough and never gave you anything. You had to earn everything you got off them.”
England had retained the Ashes in 1954/55, in part thanks to the explosive pace of Frank Tyson, but injury kept him out at the start of the 1956 series, and then they felt they did not need him until the final Test at The Oval. Instead spin became the principal weapon of a home side led by Peter May.
After the first Test at Trent Bridge was drawn, Ian Johnson’s Australia took the lead at Lord’s, but it was a false dawn. The hosts won by an innings at Headingley, with Laker and Lock to the fore, and Old Trafford, where the former stole the show. A draw at The Oval secured a 2-1 series victory.
The performances of off-spinner Johnson, who toured in 1948 but had not been picked in 1953, and leg-spinner, Richie Benaud, paled in comparison.
Losing the toss four times in five Tests did not help. England were the better side in four of the five Tests, and were worthy winners. The tourists even struggled against the counties, with 14 draws.
The series had other substantial figures. May scored 453 runs, with left-handed opener Peter Richardson making 364. For Australia, Jimmy Burke totalled 271 and Colin McDonald, on his second tour to England, 243, but, crucially, no one scored a Test century for them. The flamboyant Keith Miller, still going strong at the age of 36, bowled with accuracy, variety and imagination, taking 21 Test wickets, including 10 at his beloved Lord’s, while fellow seamer Ron Archer took 18, but the Australian attack was hit hard by injuries.
Cartoonist Roy Ullyett of the Daily Express summed it up with a dazed kangaroo in Aussie kit and the ditty: “Here lie the Ashes of ‘56, skittled by Laker for next to nix. Never forgotten, sorry you thought our wicket rotten,” in reference to the shaved surface at Old Trafford.
It was a tumultuous year politically. In February, two of the ‘Cambridge spies’, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, turned up in Moscow. Later, the Suez Crisis lead to the downfall of Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal just a few days before the Old Trafford Test, sparking international condemnation.
Also that summer John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger made its West End debut, poking a finger into the eye of the Establishment. The Australians have trouble not looking back in anger at that Manchester Test, though.
The tourists believed the groundsman, Bert Flack, had been ordered to prepare a dusty, spinning track, with Craig saying: “We certainly had a bit of a shock when we went out to field. That was the first I’d seen of the pitch. It was very dry and virtually white.”
In his book, Spinning Round the World, Laker wrote: “I knew the ball would turn. There was no grass to bind the wicket. It looked good, but it was not solid enough.”
Bradman, now a selector, perhaps indulged in kidology, when he told Laker: “It’s just what our fellows have been waiting for. They will get a packet of runs.”
Neil Harvey, who recorded a pair in the game, told me: “Manchester was a dustbowl, and once you lost the toss you’d had it. England had two super finger-spinners. Australia had no one. Johnson was a flighty bowler, and apart from one game [Old Trafford in 1961] Benaud had a pretty ordinary bowling record in England. It suited a quick finger-spinner, not the blokes with a bit of flight and guile. Laker and Lock dug the ball in and could turn it a couple of feet. That was the difference.”
Australia batsman and reserve keeper Len Maddocks, who was Laker’s 19th victim, said: “Ray Lindwall bowled the first ball of that Test and it landed outside the off stump and came through to me accompanied by a cloud of dust. Keith Miller was at second slip, and he burst out laughing and said, ‘This game will be over in two days’.”
England put themselves in a position of strength, making 459. Richardson scored his first Test century, 104, once again showing his strength on the legside, and Cowdrey made 80 in their opening stand of 174, England’s best start against Australia since 1938.
The Reverend David Sheppard made 113; he had given up playing regularly to take up Holy Orders, and had batted only four times that summer for Sussex.
There was nothing in the surface for the seamers as England’s top five – all amateurs – flourished. Johnson (4 for 151) and Benaud (2 for 123) struggled.
The Australians had become disgruntled about the pitch by now, but Johnson told his team they would respond with 500. Miller, in one of his more selfish moments, is quoted as saying, “Six to four we don’t.”
They began batting at half-past two on day two and by the close, had lost 11 wickets. Brian Statham and Trevor Bailey bowled 10 overs for 10 runs with the new ball, but 48 for 0 represented a steady start before Laker and Lock took over (and even then they had to switch ends).
Laker had Colin McDonald caught by Lock at short leg, and in the same over he pitched a ball on the line of left-hander Harvey’s leg stump, spun it past his outstretched bat and clipped the top of off. It was “the ball that won the Test series,” Laker reckoned. Harvey said it was as good as Shane Warne’s ball to Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993.
Again there were no elaborate celebrations by Laker, he merely put his hands on his hips. Lock then took his only wicket of the Test, having Burke caught, before Laker began a spell of 7 for 8 in 22 balls after tea to finish the innings off. Australia were bowled out for 84, with Laker taking 9 for 37. The tourists had tried to hit him out of the attack – with disastrous consequences. “There’s was a bad batting performance,” Laker wrote. “Naturally I was proud of my return of nine wickets – but it would never have been as profitable if there had been sanity in the Australian display.”
Following on, Australia again lost Harvey, clipping a full toss to Cowdrey at short midwicket, and they closed the day on 53 for 1.
There was hardly any play on days three (only Burke fell in the two hours possible) and four (with the rest day sandwiched in between), allowing arguments to rage about the pitch over the weekend, although Johnson declined to comment at the time.
By the time play resumed on the fifth, however, the rain had made the uncovered pitch decidedly sticky. Craig said: “We were rather surprised that we played that day. When we went to the ground, we didn’t expect to be starting early. We were only 10 minutes late starting, when we thought we’d be lucky to get on before lunch. The wicket was still damp at that stage.”
But at lunchtime on the final day the sun came out, and after that the ball spun appreciably. Johnson said, “We can save this match”, to which Miller is said to have replied – again – “I’ll give you six to four!” Maybe he liked the line so much he used it twice.
Australia were finally dismissed for 205 with just over an hour to spare, despite a skilful 89 from McDonald. Harvey congratulated Laker, saying, “Well done, Jimmy. You’ve done a great job.” The Englishman replied, “Well, you’ve got to get them when you can, haven’t you?”
Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly, by now a journalist, said the pitch was “a complete disgrace”, while Johnson later said Australia had been “trapped on a stinker, the fellows were angry and [our] batting blew up [but] when the controversy and the side issues of the match are forgotten, Laker’s wonderful bowling will remain”.
May was adamant the hosts had not been handed a huge advantage: “The pitch was not that bad. Jim just dripped away at their nerves, realising that they had got a little obsessional about him and the wickets.”
Laker recorded figures of 51.2-23-53-10, and although Lock did not take a wicket this time, he certainly kept it tight, with 55-30-69-0. “Tony’s achievements were clouded a bit by the suspicion about his action, caused by bowling under that low ceiling at Alf Gover’s school at The Oval,” Insole said. “But he was devastating when the pitch suited him, and he and Laker were the perfect pairing. He bowled a bit short in this Test, though.”
Bailey said there was an “intense rivalry” between Laker and Lock (although you would not detect that from reading Laker’s book), and the England team could see Lock “getting crosser and crosser”, and “bowling quicker and quicker and quicker – we all knew that if only he slowed down he had to get a wicket”.
The injured Alan Davidson remembers watching the Test. “We had played Lancashire (on the seventh game of the tour) and dismissed them on a green top for 108,” he told me. “Our keeper was standing back 25 yards, and the slip was 15 further back, so we were expecting another green top. But it was a ‘mild top’, and Laker and Lock were unplayable. We weren’t good enough at times to get a nick. With Lock, every second or third ball beat the bat. It was unbelievable he only took one wicket. We didn’t feel angry. We had the same surface to bowl on. Jim was just a great bowler.”
All Laker’s 19 had been taken from the Stretford End, and it broke the previous first-class record of 17, beating Sydney Barnes’ 17 for 159 for England against South Africa at Johannesburg in 1913. He had equalled Alec Bedser’s Ashes record of 39 wickets in a series, with one Test still to play. He added another seven at The Oval.
England had won by an innings and 170 runs, and it was the first definite result in an Ashes Test at Old Trafford since 1905. It was also the first time England had won two Ashes Tests at home since 1905, and that they had taken three Ashes series in a row since five-Test series started between the two countries in 1897/98.
It poured that night and for days afterwards, so England’s triumph could so easily not have happened.
Laker left Old Trafford at 8.30 that night after several hours of celebrations, and talking to the media. He had to return to London to play at The Oval the next day – against the Australians!
Afterwards he stopped on his way back for a pint and a pie at a pub in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and was not recognised by any of the other customers.
He was married to an Austrian who did not know much about cricket, and when he arrived home she said, after fielding many congratulatory telephone calls: “Jim, did you do something good today?”
Huw Turbervill 
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