Foxes Flashback - Tony Lock

Tony Lock (born 5^th July, 1929)

Perhaps because he only played for two and a half seasons Tony Lock is maybe one of the forgotten characters who played a crucial role in building self-belief in the great Leicestershire team of the 1970s.

Not a lot had gone right for the club between 1956 and 1964 (4 wooden spoons and 3 bottom but one positions). However, the ground was purchased in 1965 and plans were quickly made to build the new pavilion. This was critical. The main reason players did not want to come to Leicestershire was that they wanted to avoid getting splinters in their feet descending to the Victorian showers in the old structure!

Tony Lock very much dipped his toe in the Leicestershire water by playing just 8 mid-week games in 1965. By now he had abandoned his England career and all but emigrated to Western Australia. He intended just playing in the Lancashire League, but Leicestershire’s Secretary, Mike Turner had other ideas.

In 1966 he returned as captain and made an impact with his aggressive batting and bowling, but more than anything else by his fielding close to the wicket and enthusiastic captaincy. This was not always to the liking of his players. Early one morning, that normally reliable slip fielder, Maurice Hallam, dropped a ‘sitter’. “Unlike you Maurice, to drop such an easy catch” he was teased at lunchtime. “I could have caught it easily, it’s just I did not fancy getting hugged and kissed by the skipper so early in the morning”.

Lock played 49 tests for England, in an era when he competed for selection with Yorkshire’s Johnny Wardle, another strong character who had his own ideas about captaincy and slow left arm bowling. He was not selected to tour Australia in 1962/63 (MCC curiously choosing three off break bowlers and no left arm slow bowler) so he decided to go there anyway, and so started almost a decade of playing for Western Australia, and where he lived for the rest of his life.

One of his most astonishing ‘achievements’ was to help Jim Laker bowl Australia out in the Old Trafford Test of 1956. Laker taking 19 wickets for 90, Lock 1 for 106. The wicket was perfect for slow bowling, and Lock’s response to each Laker wicket was to bowl faster and faster the more frustrated he became.

He was also a fundamental part of the Surrey team that won seven county championships in a row in the 1950s, and in two seasons he took more than 200 wickets (the last bowler to do so).