Tony Lock

Introduction

The remarkable life of an enduring cricketer placed him in the halls of fame in two hemispheres. Tony Lock, in the words of his Surrey junior, Micky Stewart, was the most inspirational of all the players he had encountered in his own long association with the game. Yet, at the same time, he regrets that Surrey did not see the best of his former colleague in terms of bowling purity. The years of controversy in which Lock destructively ruled at Kennington Oval were disavowed in a return to the orthodox bowling of his youth in Western Australia. His reinvention as a bowler occurred after he had viewed himself on film in a private showing during the tour of New Zealand in 1959. 'If I'd known I was throwing I wouldn't have bowled like that,' was a belated exclamation of remorse.

Pat Pocock, as a younger county player, says: 'The extraordinary thing about Tony is that when he "threw" he was an Underwood type of bowler - by far the best bad-wicket bowler in the world. He then became the best hard-wicket bowler in the manner of Bishan Bedi.'

The zest and fervour which Lock projected as a cricketer was given full rein when he assumed the role of captain, first at Leicester after leaving Surrey, and then in Perth. The rekindling of his talents in Australia and the adjustment to the slower style brought him a late harvest of wickets. He led Western Australia to a Sheffield Shield triumph over Victoria in the torrid heat at Melbourne in February 1968. Dennis Lillee, who has kindly provided the foreword to my book, was one of his young disciples in Perth. 'Lockie taught me the need for a hold-no-quarter approach to playing the game. I had a lot of that in my make-up but to see my captain with the same attributes endorsing this was very important to a young player like myself.'

The intensity of Lock's cricket always signalled him as a man to watch. As one Oval partisan remembered, it was all 'edge-of-the-seat stuff,' Lock possessed a charisma which would have charmed and enthralled another generation just as much as it did his devotees at Kennington Oval and in Western Australia.

Jackie Birkenshaw played under Lock and his successor, Raymond Illingworth, at Leicester. He remembers that each of them had tremendous self-belief. 'Lockie was the showman and led by example. He never allowed a game to drift and tried to make things happen. We watched him tumbling and diving around on the field. You could not help but be infected by his enthusiasm.'

The headlines in Surrey's seven championship years in the 1950s were often dominated by the spinning exploits of Lock and his partner, Jim Laker. It was an alliance culled from fierce personal rivalry but their names were twinned in cricket lore in a way more usually associated with opening batsmen or opening bowlers. Peter Walker, the former Glamorgan and England all-rounder, remembers the perils of facing the pair on the uncovered wickets of the time. 'They induced a kind of fear; there was always the danger of receiving an unplayable ball.'

Lock, at seventeen the youngest player to represent the county in 1946, rose to eminence in a lenient regime. He was the first genuine slow left-arm bowler to play for Surrey. This distinction was soon revealed as a false dawn when he exchanged the hailed orthodoxy for a more violent mode of attack. After two winters spent working at a Croydon indoor school he emerged with a lower trajectory that produced waspish spin at around medium pace. The ball veered crazily from the leg stump to hit the top of the off and often leapt shoulder high.

Jim Parks, in Sussex, was one witness of the newly arrived vicious executioner. 'As a youngster, Lockie had a nice straight arm and was a bowler with flight. Suddenly, the arm bent a little and he became absolutely lethal. He had an enormous drag, too, and he hurled the ball at you from about twenty yards. I scored a few runs against him but you had to fight when the wicket was doing a bit. It was quite a contest.'

Tony Lock won renown in three distinct phases as a cricketer. Contemporaries have said that there has never been a more aggressive spin bowler. His vintage years with Surrey were in the mid-1950s. He twice headed the national averages; he took 212 wickets in 1957, the last bowler to reach this milestone in a season. He is ninth in the list of all-time wicket-takers, with 2,844 wickets at 19.23 runs each. He was not to be underestimated as a batsman, as he is the only player to score 10,000 runs without a century.

All of my conversations have yielded abiding memories of Lock as a magician in the field, either in his favoured backward short-leg position, or pulling off breathtaking catches off his own bowling. Neville Cardus recalled Lock holding 'quite sinful catches, catches which were not there until his rapid, hungry eyesight created them.' Micky Stewart said: 'The spectacular ones, the sudden full-length dives were the easy ones. His best were when he took the rockets close in, without anyone noticing.' Lock's brilliance as a close fieldsman brought him 831 catches, a career tally only exceeded by Frank Woolley and W.G. Grace.

Geoff Havercroft, the former secretary of the West Australian Cricket Association, first recommended the concept of this book to me. He has since been an able and diligent collaborator and researcher, and also used his good offices to arrange interviews with John Inverarity, the former WA captain, and Dennis Lillee, the current president at the WACA, during my visit to Perth in December 2006. I am most grateful to him for this service and also for undertaking interviews with Ian Brayshaw, Tony Mann and Graham McKenzie, other contemporaries of Lock. It was also good to meet two Surrey exiles again, Peter Loader and Ron Tindall, and be entertained and enlightened with their memories. Among immediate family and close friends I am also indebted to Lock's sons, Richard and Graeme; his brother, Bryan; Nova Hearn, the cousin of his wife, Audrey Lock; Alan Wainscoat and the late Julia White, who offered splendid hospitality and recollections of her long-standing friendship with a great cricketer during a stay at her home in Pembrokeshire.

In England, Roger Packham, the historian, has given invaluable and much appreciated help and guidance in relating the events of Lock's boyhood - and in drawing up profiles of his cricket mentors, headmaster Leonard Moulding and Sir Henry Leveson Gower, the former Surrey president and squire in the picturesque Surrey village of Limpsfield in the lee of the North Downs. Other contributors to the early years were Derek Horn, a fellow pupil at Limpsfield School, Sir Oliver Popplewell and John Banfield, both former Surrey Colts. Sir Oliver pointed me in the right direction when he said that Lock was the best he had seen for a boy of his age.

The remembrances of a great cricketer have been given further impetus in conversations with Surrey and England contemporaries. My book on Lock completes a quartet of studies - it follows Peter May, Jim Laker and the Bedsers - in the Surrey canon. So, this has been an opportunity to revisit the best of times in company with Sir Alec Bedser, Arthur McIntyre, Micky Stewart, Raman Subba Row, Pat Pocock, David Sydenham, Richard Jefferson, David Allen, Trevor Bailey, Doug Insole, Donald Carr, Peter Walker, Peter Richardson, Jim Parks and Tom Graveney. Yorkshire contemporaries, Brian Close, Ted Lester, Bob Appleyard and Raymond Illingworth, have also recalled the courage of a vaunted rival. Illingworth recalled, with some amusement, the keen rivalry between Lock and his arch rival for England honours in Yorkshire, Johnny Wardle. There was also praise from him for a bowler who was always a threat, 'even when we were chasing a small target.'

Michael Turner, the former Leicestershire secretary, was another splendid host with cherished memories of his former captain at Grace Road. He, along with Lock's off-spinning partner, Jack Birkenshaw, remembers the impact on the county's fortunes in the mid-1960s. One of the most amazing aspects of Lock's late-flowering career was that he was commuting between two countries 12,000 miles apart. The transformation in the fortunes at Leicester and in Western Australia raised the status of hitherto struggling cricket camps. One writer noted the portentous arrival of the veteran at Leicester: 'Lock's effect on the county was electrifying, the players were swept along by his leadership and came to believe, for the first time in Leicestershire's history, that they were capable of beating any other county.' He carried the county from the lower depths of the championship to second place to Yorkshire in his last season in 1967.

I must also thank archivists and librarians: David Studham, at the Melbourne Cricket Club; Sylvia Michael at Leicester; Jo Miller at the Oval; David Robertson at Canterbury and Rob Boddie at Hove for their support on a marathon project. David Bennett, the graphologist, has given character impressions based on Lock's handwriting. Alf Batchelder, the Australian cricket historian, has provided illustration items and referred me to notes on the Sheffield Shield in his book, Pavilions in the Park. As always, my researches have been lightened by the courteous assistance of the British Newspaper Library staff at Colindale, London. Paul Dyson has brought his statistical expertise to the task of providing a detailed analysis of Lock's career.

Tony Lock was the prince of showmen and the epitome of ebullience on the cricket field. A celebratory roll accompanied the taking of each and every...