After catching the eye with elegant strokes on his first Ashes tour in 1961, long-nosed left-hander Bill Lawry steadily pared his batting back, until it was as skeletal as his appearance. By the time he inherited Australia's captaincy against India in 1967-68, he had become the most rigidly self-denying batsman of his generation, as hard to watch as he was to dismiss. Ian Wooldridge, the English journalist, called him "a corpse with pads on". Lawry's courage was a byword, and he withstood fearsome bombardments from Trueman and Statham in the infamous Ridge Test at Lord's in June 1961, and from Hall and Griffith on an underprepared Sydney surface in February 1969. Twice, too, he carried his bat through completed Test innings. Selectors, however, treated him scurvily, dumping him as leader and player in January 1971. It is difficult to relate Lawry the deadpan accumulator to Lawry the adolescent enthusiast, now that he is a TV commentator of such infectious animation.
Gideon Haigh