The best bowling figures ever recorded across the two innings of a test match are Jim Laker's 19 for 90 for England against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956.

This short film tells the story of the match and includes interviews with some of the players who took part.

I've heard other accounts of the match that say the more desperate England's other spinner Tony Lock became to get among the wickets, the faster he bowled and the less he turned the ball.

England were so strong in the 1950s that, earlier in the decade, they could have fielded another pair of spinners, Johnny Wardle and Bob Appleyard from Yorkshire, who were every bit as good as Lock and Laker.

What was the last time England played a pair of spinners throughout a home series. I suspect it was John Emburey and Phil Edmonds, also against Australia, in 1985.

One reason for posting this is to pay my respects to one of the players interviewed - the England opener Peter Richardson.

He was the team's joker and in the habit of sending match reports from invented public schools to the snobbish E.W. Swanton at the Daily Telegraph, hoping to fool him and have them appear in the paper.

Richardson, like Trevor Bailey and Alan Oakman, is no longer with us, but Australia's Neil Harvey is still alive at the age of 94.