At club level, he formed a formidable spin partnership with Tony Lock, who was a left-arm orthodox spinner, and they played a key part in the success of the Surrey team through the 1950s including seven consecutive County Championship titles from 1952 to 1958.

[3] In March 1938, aged 16, Laker was invited to attend special coaching by Yorkshire County Cricket Club in their winter shed at Headingley.

[7] Yorkshire's coaching sessions were run by the former county batsman Benny Wilson, who was the first to show Laker how to spin the ball and encourage him to develop the skill.

Charlie Lee, one of Laker's Saltaire team-mates, had a similar recollection saying that "Jim bowled all sorts of stuff and generally enjoyed himself without ever appearing to have the makings of a great bowler".

[3] Laker left school in February 1939 and obtained full-time employment at Barclays Bank in Bradford city centre, working a nine-hour day for £5 a month (£330 in 2021 terms).

[11] He went to Leicestershire for infantry training and was then posted to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), serving in Palestine and Cairo until 1945, although he was never involved in front line fighting.

[12] John Arlott later wrote that English cricketers in Egypt were writing home and talking about "a Yorkshire lad who could bowl off spin like a master".

In these matches, he encountered several top-class players including Norman Yardley, Peter Smith, Bert Sutcliffe, Ron Aspinall, Dudley Nourse and Arthur McIntyre.

Bert Jordan had died during the war and, all his sisters having married and moved on, his northern roots were broken and he no longer had any pressing reason to return to Bradford.

He was posted to the War Office itself in central London and was invited by an army friend called Colin Harris to lodge with his family in Forest Hill, a couple of miles from Catford.

[34] After the Headingley match, Laker was omitted from England's team in the final Test at The Oval, his home ground, and he was not included in the squad for the tour of South Africa in 1948–49.

[36] Fred Trueman later recalled that the Yorkshire club president Ernest Holdsworth contacted Laker in 1948 and invited him to dinner at a London restaurant.

He set an attacking leg side field and bowled around the wicket, concentrating on line and length with minimal flight, which gave the batsmen no time to come forward to the pitch of the ball.

Roy Webber's history of the competition was published soon afterwards and, in his review of the contemporary county teams, he wrote that "it is difficult to imagine a better and more balanced bowling attack than that presented by Alec Bedser, Peter Loader, Stuart Surridge, Jim Laker and Tony Lock".

In Australia's first innings, England's two pace bowlers, Trevor Bailey and Brian Statham, bowled only ten overs between them before Laker and Lock were introduced.

[56] During the afternoon session, Laker took four wickets in nine overs for three runs but then Richie Benaud joined McDonald and they stayed together for 75 minutes to the tea interval.

[56] The pitch was taking prodigious spin after tea and Australia's hopes faded when Laker dismissed McDonald with the second ball of the evening session.

[63] The record for the most wickets taken in a Test match was previously held by England's Sydney Barnes who took seventeen for 159 at the Old Wanderers, in Johannesburg, against South Africa in December 1913.

[66] Raman Subba Row blamed May for his "management style" which was not at all people-oriented, unlike that of Stuart Surridge, May's predecessor as Surrey captain, who was a "people person" and "down to earth".

[66] On England's disastrous tour of Australia in 1958–59, Laker was one of the few players to enhance his reputation, bowling well on unhelpful pitches, but he badly damaged his spin finger and had to return home early.

Williams wrote that Laker ruined his case through characteristic bluntness and by not fully understanding the reasons why amateurism existed, rightly or wrongly, in the first place.

His varied flight of the ball was difficult for the batsman to predict and, if he was given any assistance by pitch or weather conditions, Laker could generate extra pace and spin so as to be at times "almost unplayable".

Sobers was especially wary of Laker's straight ball because, unusual among spinners, it was delivered at lesser pace than his spinning deliveries and it "drifted" (i.e., as an outswinger).

As Trueman says, photographs of Laker in the next day's newspapers show him strolling towards the pavilion, not even smiling, sweater over his shoulder, "as if returning from net practice".

[88] In Peter May's autobiography, he wrote about how Arthur McIntyre kept superbly to the great Surrey bowling attack of Bedser, Loader, Laker and Lock on difficult wickets.

She was born in Vienna but, opposed to Nazism, she left Austria after the Anschluss and was in the Middle East when World War II began.

"[90] In July 1956, only three weeks before his record-breaking performance at Old Trafford, Laker was Roy Plomley's guest on his Desert Island Discs radio programme.

His musical choices included Ol' Man River by Paul Robeson, songs by Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields and classical pieces by Pietro Mascagni and Franz Schubert.

[93] Laker developed an interest in broadcasting and, after he retired from playing, became a highly regarded cricket commentator for ITV from 1966 to 1968 and for BBC Television from 1968 until his death in 1986.

[83] Ted Dexter, as a summariser, worked with commentators Laker and Richie Benaud at the BBC and later remarked on how "a new style of interpretation had evolved as ball-by-ball commentary became their preserve", their trademarks being "patience, accuracy and persistence".