Not even the great Shane Warne ever came close to emulating Jim Laker’s unique achievement of taking 19 wickets in a Test match. His haul in 1956 remains a landmark unlikely to be bettered.
NOT even the great Shane Warne ever came close to emulating Jim Laker’s unique achievement of taking 19 wickets in a Test match. His haul in 1956 remains a landmark unlikely to be bettered.
Laker, a 34-year-old Yorkshireman, had already bagged 11 wickets with his off-breaks in the previous Test at Headingley and 20 in total that series.
When the fourth Test started across the Pennines at Old Trafford, the notoriously fickle Manchester weather provided the perfect conditions for spin bowling.
England amassed 459 quickly in their first innings and on the second afternoon Australia went out to bat.
They made a solid start, with the opening pair of Jim Burke and Colin McDonald sharing a 48-run partnership. But as soon as Laker and his spin partner Tony Lock came on to bowl, wickets started to tumble.
McDonald fell first, followed by Neil Harvey, who received an unplayable delivery that pitched on middle and clipped off-stump.
Laker had bowled what he regarded as the pivotal ball of the match.
It sent shockwaves through the Australian camp and soon they had collapsed from 48-0 to 84 all out, with Laker taking 9-37.
England captain Peter May enforced the follow-on and before the end of play Laker had taken his tenth wicket of the match when Neil Harvey, who had come in for an injured McDonald, completed a “pair” after prodding a full toss to Colin Cowdrey at midwicket for his second duck of the day.
Australia closed Day Two on 53-1.
All but 45 minutes’ play was lost to rain on the Saturday but it was enough time for Laker to have Burke caught at leg slip.
When the players returned on Monday morning, Australia started solidly and looked set to salvage an unlikely draw.
But brighter conditions soon dried the pitch, allowing Laker to extract prodigious turn. When Ian Craig was trapped lbw, Australia fell apart.
Ken Mackay, Keith Miller and Ron Archer all posted no score, and when McDonald’s lone resistance ended when he had scored 89, the match was all but lost.
Laker duly completed the job he had started, taking the wickets of Richie Benaud, Ray Lindwall and finally Len Maddocks to finish with figures of 51.2-23-10-53 for the innings and 68-27-90-19 for the match.
Tony Lock took the only other Australian wicket.
In the five-match series, Laker took 46 wickets, averaging just 9.60 runs each.
Laker’s 19 wickets surpassed the figures of England’s Sydney Barnes – 17-159 – against South Africa in 1913.
Barnes was England’s dominant bowler in the early 20th Century.
He only played 27 Tests but took a remarkable 189 wickets, averaging a miserly 16.43 and taking five wickets in an innings a staggering 24 times.
Only a handful of bowlers have come close to matching Laker’s figures in Tests.
India’s Anil Kumble alone has equalled Laker’s ten-wicket haul in a Test innings, taking 10-74 against Pakistan in Delhi in 1999.
Australian paceman Bob Massie was a one-hit wonder. He played just six Tests but took 16-137 on debut at Lords in 1972 before fading into obscurity.
Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan took 16-220 against England at the Oval in 1998 and by his retirement in 2010 had comfortably overhauled Shane Warne’s then-record tally of 708 Test wickets, notching up his 800th with his last ball in his final Test.
Muralitharan’s career was plagued by controversy about the legitimacy of his bowling action but statistically he is the greatest bowler of all time, having claimed more than 1,300 wickets in Tests and One-Day Internationals.
Perhaps the most efficient and deadly of modern pacemen was New Zealander Richard Hadlee.
Apart from being a notable all-rounder, Hadlee stands seventh on the all-time list of Test wicket-takers with 431 victims.
He achieved this in remarkably few Test matches, 86, averaging five wickets per Test.
Of the great bowlers, only Muralitharan averages more wickets per game.