Jim Laker’s Everest: The Spell That Broke Australia

Cricket has known many great spells and many inspired afternoons where a bowler bent the game to his will. But none—before or since—has rivalled what Jim Laker conjured on a crumbling Old Trafford pitch in 1956. Nineteen wickets for ninety runs. A feat so monumental that it stands, even now, like Everest in the annals of the game.

The drama began at 4 PM on July 27. Australia, seemingly untroubled at 48 without loss, was playing as though the Ashes were still theirs to seize. Then Laker switched to the Stretford End, and released a ball that changed history. It was an off-break of classical beauty, pitched on leg stump, drifting deceptively before spinning viciously past Neil Harvey’s bat to clip off. A single moment, but one that shattered Australia’s fragile confidence. "It was the ball that won the series," Laker would later say.

From that point on, it was as if the Australians were caught in a web of inevitability. In May, they had already been humbled by Laker’s sorcery in a county match for Surrey, where he took all ten wickets in an innings. At Headingley in the third Test, his 11-wicket haul had broken them once more. And now, as the Old Trafford pitch disintegrated underfoot, they saw their worst nightmare unfold—trapped against a bowler who had, by some cosmic alignment, attained an almost supernatural command over spin.

By tea, the cracks in Australia’s resolve had become fissures. Lock removed Jim Burke with the first ball after the break, but this was Laker’s theatre, and he took centre stage with quiet ruthlessness. He claimed seven more wickets that afternoon, reducing the visitors to a humiliating 84 all out. His figures: 9 for 37. It was domination, not merely of batsmen, but of minds and spirits. Peter May, England’s captain, later dismissed the notion that the pitch had been treacherous. "Jim just dripped away at their nerves," he said.

Among those stationed close to the bat was Alan Oakman, fielding at short leg, where he stood perilously close to the action. Keith Miller, the battle-hardened Australian, issued a warning: "If you don't look out, I'll hit you in the bollocks." Oakman, unsure if Miller was serious, chose to believe he wasn’t. Yet the tension was unmistakable—Australia was fighting against something it could not comprehend, and fear was beginning to fray their discipline.

As wickets continued to tumble, desperate strategies emerged. Ken Mackay resorted to pad play, resembling, in his own words, "an elephant on ice." Richie Benaud tried to counterattack, but his shot found the only fielder posted deep—a position Laker always insisted upon. Thirty years later, when his ashes were scattered at The Oval, they were laid to rest at cow corner—the very spot where so many of his victims had perished.

The Final Day: The Inevitable and the Immortal

Monday’s rain threatened to deny Laker his moment. For hours, the game hung in limbo, the Old Trafford pitch turning into what one writer described as "a blasted heath." But by the final morning, as the sun cut through the grey, fate aligned itself with Laker once more. The Australians, battered and hopeless, fell to him in a procession. By the time Ray Lindwall edged to leg slip, Laker had taken 18 wickets—more than any bowler in a single Test before him. One more remained.

Len Maddocks faced the decisive delivery, but the outcome was never in doubt. Laker trapped him LBW, completing an achievement so implausible that even Sydney Barnes, the great master of spin who had once taken 17 wickets in a match, could only shake his head. "No beggar got all ten when I was bowling at the other end," he grumbled.

And so, with his 19 for 90 etched into the book of cricketing miracles, Jim Laker strolled off the field. No celebration, no flourish—just a slow walk to the pavilion, his sweater slung casually over his shoulder, as though he had merely completed a day’s work.

The Man Behind the Spell

Tony Lock, his spin partner, had toiled relentlessly alongside him, sending down 69 overs to Laker’s 68. Yet Lock had taken just one solitary wicket. It was an imbalance that haunted him. "At first, he applauded Jim’s wickets," Alan Oakman recalled. "By the end, he just folded his arms." Years later, Lock would confide in Laker’s wife, Lilly: "I wish I hadn’t taken that one wicket." It was a reflection of the weight that nightmarish match carried for him, a memory he could neither embrace nor escape.

Laker himself remained enigmatic, a craftsman who honed his skills with obsessive discipline. "I never ran up to bowl without some plan in my mind," he once said. He was, as Colin Cowdrey described, "the calm destroyer"—a man who spun his web in silence, never revealing his pleasure when the fly was caught.

His fingers, not unnaturally large, suffered for his art—split skin, corns, constant soreness. He treated them with friar’s balsam, a small sacrifice for the magic he produced. Spectators swore they could hear the whirr of his deliveries, the snap of his fingers imparting revolutions upon revolutions.

A Legacy Unmatched

Time has tested many records, but none has challenged Laker’s Old Trafford masterpiece. The conditions, the opposition, the stage—it was a perfect storm, but it needed a perfect bowler to seize it. Many great spinners have come and gone, but none has touched what Laker touched that week in Manchester.

It was more than just bowling. It was a psychological dismantling, a slow, inexorable crushing of a team’s will. A bowler in perfect rhythm, a nation enthralled, and a match that, even after decades, remains untouched in its grandeur.

Jim Laker did not merely take 19 wickets in a Test match. He wrote his name into cricket’s mythology. And there, like Everest, he remains.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar