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Bill Lawry, Run-Digger: Bill Lawry’s Own Story (1966)

William Morris Lawry AM is an Australian and Victorian cricket legend, who captained Australia for 25 Test Matches and also led the team for the first ever One Day International match held in 1971. A conservative opening batsman who would tenaciously hold on for a long stint at the crease, an English journalist dubbed him the ‘corpse with pads on’ for his playstyle, though he preferred the more complementary nickname ‘run-digger’. For thousands of Aussies who were born too late to see him play, Bill Lawry was the voice of summer for over forty years as an integral member of the Channel Nine commentary team until his retirement in 2018, only rivalled in this regard by his good friends Richie Benaud and Tony Greig.

Published in 1966 as Lawry was rising to stardom but had not yet been appointed captain, Run-Digger is a semi ghost-written autobiography intended to capture the interest of cricket fanatics. Robert Menzies was such a fanatic. Over the course of his Prime Ministership, he utilised the opportunity given by semi-annual trips to England to attend more Ashes matches than just about anyone not directly involved in the team. He also founded the tradition of the Prime Minister’s XI, and the Menzies Collection contains a whole swathe of these types of popular-consumption cricket books. Run-Digger however is unique because Menzies, a parochial Victorian when it came to sport, wrote the foreword in which he described his qualified admiration for Lawry’s trademark patience:

‘Bill Lawry is, I am credibly informed, a fancier of pigeons. This pleasing hobby must frequently direct his eyes towards the heavens. This must be one of the compensations which we all need in our lives, for, when he goes to the batting crease he is certainly no star-gazer. His perimeter is the boundary-line; his task the earth-bound task of watching the bowler and the men in the field, defeating one and eluding the others. This is a task which he performs with remarkable success, because his concentration upon it is consistent and outstanding.

That he is the most reliable opening batsman in the world is, I think, quite clear. Of course, to the onlooker avid for sensation, he can occasionally be very dull and unimaginative. I have myself seen him in the doldrums, and have prayed for a breeze. But I have also seen him in full cry, hooking the ball with gusto and reducing the bowler to a state of frustrated despair.

The truth is that he has not only great native skill, but also all the virtues of indomitable concentration (without which no batsman can really be great); and some of the defects of those virtues. I don’t think he worries unduly about the onlookers; for him, as in “Hamlet”, “the play’s the thing”…’