On Tony Lock’s birthday, artist Maha remembers her experience with the Surrey spin twins

The Surrey Spin Twins as they were called, Jim Laker and Tony Lock are two tweakers one is sure to come across during the perusal of The Ashes. (For my cricket agnostic comrades The Ashes is a historic trophy England and Australia play for ever since 1882.)

I was in the course of understanding the bowling wreckage caused by these two in the 1953 and the 1956 series, both of which led to winning of the urn by England. This was for a project Arun and I were working on together and a lot of the process was conducted over phone calls.

Several giffgaff-minutes later, I completed sketching the panels one by one, illustrating the bowling action, the dual attack impact and the Australian debris left by them on the field.

Quite pleased with the way I had captured their joint and individual bowling spells, I darted off the files containing my art work to Arun.

The only thing was that I had named all my files ‘Lake and Locker’. And I had carried on referring the bowlers thus, all through my conversation about the panels and the associated work!

Blasphemous as he may have considered it, it did not stop Arun from carefully filing this under A level bloomers of the project.

William Archibald Spooner may or may not qualify this, but what it did produce was more than few laughs and a permanent reference to my level of knowledge on the subject!