David “Syd” Lawrence, the Gloucestershire and England cricketer who has died aged 61, a year after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease, knew only one way to bowl. It was to charge up to the crease and hurl the ball down as fast as he could – whether it was eleven o’clock in the morning or six in the evening after a long day in the field. He became the first English-born black Test cricketer when he made his debut in 1988.
For Gloucestershire he united with Courtney Walsh, the great West Indian paceman, who would soon become a friend. They would also enjoy themselves as revellers at the St Paul’s carnival in Bristol each year. Together they formed a formidable, contrasting pair of opening bowlers. Walsh was the more calculating cricketer, bowling fast one day and relying on accuracy, cunning and late movement the next. Lawrence just kept racing in with abandon, a spectacular, uplifting sight unless you happened to be the batsman at the other end.
Lawrence’s boyhood heroes were Michael Holding, whom he watched tormenting England’s batsmen at the Oval in 1976, and Viv Richards, who later played a brief, yet critical, part in Lawrence’s development as a professional cricketer. Early in his career Lawrence was involved in a few scrapes in Bristol; there was the odd scuffle in a pub alongside the suspicion that some of his mates might be leading him in the wrong direction. Tony Brown, the former Gloucestershire captain, then in charge at Bristol, had the good idea of taking the young Lawrence down to Taunton to meet up with Richards, who was playing for Somerset at the time. “People are waiting for you to fuck up,” said Richards. “Don’t give them that satisfaction.”
The meeting had a huge impact on Lawrence and he would never forget it. It certainly hardened his resolve to make the most of his ability to bowl fast. Soon he was offering an obvious threat to batsmen on the county circuit, and it may not be a coincidence that he often bowled very well against Somerset. He was desperate to impress his hero.
In fact he dismissed Richards several times, including in the Antiguan’s last Test innings at the Oval in 1991, when Lawrence finished on the winning side with five wickets to his name. By now a substantial Test career was on the horizon, but such ambitions were destroyed in Wellington, New Zealand, the following year when his left knee cap shattered when he was in his delivery stride, the crack echoing all around the ground. He tried agonisingly hard to recover from this injury but he could never bowl fast again.
Lawrence was born in Gloucester, where his Jamaican parents, Joe and Hilda, had settled; his father was a welder, while his mother worked as a nurse. He moved to Bristol when he joined the playing staff of Gloucestershire in 1981 and was given the nickname “Syd” – after the band leader of that name – by the future England opening batsman Chris Broad, after a chaotic fielding practice with the second team.
The coach, Graham Wiltshire, was hitting catches and calling out the name of the chosen fielder. When shouting “David” three youngsters collided under the ball at the same time, so some alternative names had to be found.
In 1985 Lawrence was voted the Cricket Writers’ Young Cricketer of the Year, thereby joining a list that contains most of England’s greatest players. By now his pace was raising eyebrows in county dressing rooms as well as in press boxes.
Having completed a satisfactory Test debut against Sri Lanka in 1988, he was picked for the winter tour of India, which never took place because of the South African connections of captain Graham Gooch; so he had to wait another three years to resume his international career. He would end up representing England in five Tests and a single one-day international, and finished with a haul of 515 first-class wickets. There would have been many more but for that cruel injury in Wellington.
Prematurely forced into retirement, he overcame the angst of being robbed of a career as a leading sportsman by revealing an entrepreneurial streak, which culminated in him owning and running a nightclub, Dojo, for 25 years in Bristol. By all accounts he was a hands-on boss, on the door, behind the bar and, if necessary, cleaning the toilets. He also discovered a passion for bodybuilding – as an amateur – winning several prizes.
In 2022 he was appointed president of Gloucestershire CCC and fulfilled the role with gusto. Neil Priscott, chief executive of the club, observed that “Syd pushed us to reach out to communities far and wide”.
Once diagnosed with MND, he was determined to raise awareness of the condition, including through the writing of an autobiography, In Syd’s Voice, with the assistance of Dean Wilson, the former Daily Mirror cricket correspondent, which Lawrence was desperate to finish in time. It was published a few days before his death. Wilson spoke of “a warm, big-hearted, inspirational, generous guy”, a description that tallied with the memories of just about every cricketer who played with or against him. Earlier this month, he was appointed MBE.
He is survived by his wife, Gaynor, and son, Buster.
