David Lawrence obituary: ‘Everything he did in his life, he always gave it 100%’

LAWRENCE, DAVE VALENTINE, MBE, died on June 21, aged 61, a year after a diagnosis of motor neurone disease. It was not in Dave Lawrence’s nature to give anything less than maximum effort: “Everything he did in his life, he always gave it 100%,” said friend and team-mate Jack Russell. When the third Test between New Zealand and England at Wellington in February 1992 was drifting towards a draw, Lawrence was still putting every ounce of his 17 stone into each ball. At the end of his first over, Russell approached him: “Are you OK? You’re not quite hitting the gloves in the way you normally do.” The truth was Lawrence was struggling with pain in his left knee, and had complained about it to physio Laurie Brown, without getting a satisfactory diagnosis. As he hurled himself into his delivery stride for the second ball of his third over, the kneecap split with a crack audible all round the Basin Reserve. He crashed to the ground, screaming in agony. According to Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Daily Telegraph, it sounded like the “roar of a wounded lion”. In The Times, Alan Lee called it an “incident as gruesome as anything I have seen in this game”.

In his autobiography, Lawrence recalled: “There is no amount of toughness, strength or endurance that can prepare you for a moment when your kneecap breaks and splits in two, with one half staying put and the other half in your thigh.” There was an ugly scene as a TV cameraman tried to get a close-up of him being carried off on a stretcher by team-mates. Lawrence underwent surgery immediately, and there were optimistic comments about a full recovery. The truth was different: at 27, and after just five matches, his Test career was over. After two unsuccessful comebacks, he retired.

Lawrence had been a trailblazer, the first British-born black cricketer to play for England. Tall and muscular, he ran in hard, bowling as fast as he could, with few pretensions to seam-bowling subtlety. For Gloucestershire, he formed a new-ball partnership with Courtney Walsh that gave county batsmen sleepless nights. Later, he had a successful career as a restaurant and nightclub owner, and tried his hand at boxing, before throwing himself with typical gusto into bodybuilding; he was West of England Over-40 champion for three years. But his world was turned upside down in June 2024. His left knee – a replacement for the one damaged in Wellington – had been troubling him for months, and he was struggling to walk. The diagnosis of MND was devastating. “How do you cope with what is effectively a death sentence?” he wrote. He had begun work on his autobiography with the writer Dean Wilson. Now they faced a race to tape their conversations before Lawrence’s voice became too weak. The resulting book, In Syd’s Voice: the Extraordinary Life of Dave Lawrence, was published a week before he died.

Born in Gloucester to parents who had emigrated from Jamaica, Lawrence had overcome considerable obstacles to become a professional cricketer. He took up boxing, his father’s favourite sport, and also played rugby union, but cricket was not on his radar until, aged 12, he was taken to The Oval to see Michael Holding’s demolition of England in 1976. Entranced by his athleticism and speed, he decided to give it a try, joining Gloucester City and at his first practice session bowling the fastest ball the coach had seen from a junior. But he was the club’s only black player, and he faced the racism and prejudice he had already encountered at school. For a while, he suspected his progress was held up because of his colour, but he made his way through age-group teams, where he first played alongside Russell. “There was nothing else like him in the country at the time,” he recalled. “When we played county schools cricket together, he used to terrify the opposition. In one youth game in Sussex, he took something like eight for six. I can still see the batsmen walking to the wicket so terrified they looked like ghosts.” At 16, Lawrence was offered a contract by Gloucestershire. Convinced he was on the path to stardom, he walked out of the exam hall in the middle of his English GCSE.

On his first day at the County Ground, he discovered there were three Davids among the intake. Chris Broad came up with the nickname “Syd” – a tribute to the big-band leader – and it stuck. When he got into a couple of scrapes with police, secretary-manager Tony Brown arranged a meeting with Viv Richards. “It will never be easy being a black man trying to make your way,” Richards told him. “They don’t want to respect you, and they want you to fail. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

Lawrence made his first-class debut in 1981, bowling 19 wicketless overs against Glamorgan. That summer, he played twice for England Young Cricketers against their Indian counterparts. Off the field, there were other challenges. During his first game for Gloucestershire’s Second XI in 1980, a team-mate left a banana skin outside his hotel-room door. He sat on his bed, and cried. “If this is the way my own team-mates see me, then what about those I’m playing against?” he said. Lawrence embarked on a gym routine, to ensure an imposing physical presence. “I created a new person,” he recalled. “Nobody will ever mess with me again.”

The insults did not stop. Fielding on the boundary when Gloucestershire visited Scarborough for a Sunday League game against Yorkshire in July 1984, he endured a torrent of racist abuse, and more banana skins. Yorkshire captain David Bairstow criticised the spectators, but the offenders were not banned, and Lawrence felt a lack of support from his own county. Later, when he spoke of his England ambitions, he received hate mail.

After a winter’s club cricket in Australia, he made a breakthrough in 1985, with 85 wickets at 24. With Walsh and Kevin Curran, he formed a frightening pace attack. Lawrence, said Wisden, became “the talk of the county circuit”. There was speculation about a Test call-up, but it did not materialise. Gloucestershire went close to winning the Championship in 1986, though Lawrence lost some of his potency. But he peaked in 1988, with 84 wickets at 27, including a career-best seven for 47 against Surrey at Cheltenham.

This time, the call did come, with Lawrence one of four England debutants in the one-off match against Sri Lanka at Lord’s. He was joined by Russell, the first home-grown Gloucestershire players to represent England since David Allen in 1966. Lawrence’s euphoria dimmed when Russell dropped Amal Silva in his second over. But he later removed Duleep Mendis, and collected two more wickets in Sri Lanka’s second innings.

Injury prevented him from building on that start in 1989, and he was discouraged at an England gathering in 1990, when chairman of selectors Ted Dexter asked: “How are you doing, Gladstone?” A second chance came against West Indies at Trent Bridge in 1991, where he made 34 from No.11, and he bowled superbly as England squared the series at The Oval, with second-innings figures of 5-106. To his immense satisfaction, he became the last man to dismiss Richards in a Test. Earlier in the summer, he had played his lone one-day international, taking 4-69 to set up victory over the West Indians at Lord’s. After that, selection for the New Zealand tour was a given, but he missed the first two Tests with a hip injury, before returning for that match at Wellington.

He was determined to return, but broke his knee again in the gym in 1993. Eventually, he played in four matches in 1997 but, despite a handful of wickets, he knew he would never recapture his old pace. A second comeback attempt did not get even that far, and he retired with 515 first-class wickets at 32. In 2022, he became the first black president of Gloucestershire. “He was so proud of that,” said Russell. “He wasn’t into the committee-room stuff. He was a man of the ordinary spectator – he wanted to include everybody.”

When Gloucestershire reached T20 finals day in 2024, Lawrence watched from his motorised wheelchair as they won the trophy. Their captain, James Bracey, brought it to him in the hospitality box, and both men cried. In an interview with Sky, Lawrence discussed his MND diagnosis and injury-hit career: “I guess the big man up there isn’t a Gloucestershire fan.”

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