"Saltaire is a Victorian model village located in Shipley, part of the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, in West Yorkshire, England. The Victorian era Salt's Mill and associated residential district located by the River Aire and Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site...
...Saltaire was built in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry. The name of the village is a combination of the founder's surname and the name of the river. Salt moved his business (five separate mills) from Bradford to this site near Shipley to arrange his workers and to site his large textile mill by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway. Salt employed the local architects Henry Lockwood and Richard Mawson...
...Salt built neat stone houses for his workers (much better than the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with tap water, bath-houses, a hospital and an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and a gymnasium. The village had a school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse. Recreational initiatives were also encouraged such as the establishment of a drum and fife band for school age boys and a brass band, precursor of today's Hammonds Saltaire Band, for men of the village.With the combination of quality housing, employment! recreation and social services the original town is often seen as an important development in the history of 19th century urban planning."
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"Saltaire Cricket Club was founded in 1869, just 16 years after the opening of the famous Saltaire Mills in 1853. Ever since the club has been in existence it has played in Roberts Park. The local history of Saltaire, records that Roberts Park was not officially opened until July 25, 1871 by Sir Titus Salt, and there is no record of them having played elsewhere, so it is assumed that the club must have played the first seasons on the pitch by the riverside during the period when the park was being laid out. Sir Titus Salt bought the cannons which used to stand on the parade in the park in August 1869.
The area of Roberts Park, intended as a recreation games area, is 14 acres. The cricket ground covers five acres approximately 900ft long and 350ft wide with the river running the along whole of the west side of the field. When the ground was first laid out it was subject to flooding from the river in high water, but the situation was improved by widening the river to 60 to 70ft which avoided flooding.
The club honours
Joined League: 1905
Division One Champions: 1917 1918 1920 1922 1926 1943
Division Two Champions: 1941 1967 1970 2003
Priestley Cup winners: 1905 1918 1927 1941 1942
Priestley Cup runners-up: 1921 1922 1960 1968
Second Team Division One Champions: 1905 1908 1909 1927 1928
Second Team Division Two Champions: 1960 1981
Priestley Shield winners: 1955 1998"
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Whilst actually playing for Saltaire Cricket Club, their most successful player was Sydney Barnes however the club's web site has this to say about Jim Laker... "Another famous son of Saltaire was Jim Laker. He never matched Barnes’s figures in league cricket but has the unmatched figures in Test cricket by taking 19 wickets for 90 runs against the Australians in 1956."
Jim Laker
James "Jim" Charles Laker (9 February 1922 – 23 April 1986) was a cricketer who played for England in the 1950s, known for "Laker's match" in 1956 at Old Trafford, Manchester, when he took nineteen wickets in England's victory against Australia. He played 46 Test matches between 1948 and 1959, taking 193 wickets with a bowling average of 21.24; in all first-class matches he took 1,944 wickets at 18.41.
Born in Frizinghall, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, he was known as an elegant off-spin bowler. He consistently performed well against Australian cricket teams, and formed a successful partnership with Tony Lock, a left-arm orthodox spinner. He was also part of the Surrey side that dominated the county championship with seven consecutive titles from 1952 to 1958. He was selected as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1952.
Laker was brought up by his aunts in Saltaire. Before the outbreak of World War II, he was called down to the Yorkshire County Cricket Club nets, where his performance was good enough to be offered a place as a batsman. War brought a break to his cricketing career, but reports began to emerge in about 1943 of an off-spinner in North Africa of whom people said, "You can hear the ball buzz as he lets it go."
After the war, Laker settled on the outskirts of London, and was recommended to Surrey. After Yorkshire granted permission, he was registered at the Oval, meaning he never played for his native county.
Laker bowled well at county level in 1947, and was successful against the West Indies in 1947/48, taking 7 wickets for 103 runs in the first innings of the 1st Test, making the 28th Englishman to take 5 wickets on Test debut. However, he was severely punished by Don Bradman's 1948 Australians.
On England's disastrous tour of Australia in 1958-59, Laker was one of the few England players to enhance his reputation, bowling well on unhelpful pitches.
Apart from his figures in 'Laker's match', the other bowling performance for which he is remembered is his 8 wickets for 2 runs in an innings in a Test Trial at Bradford in 1950, playing for England against 'The Rest'.
Laker's match
Laker was the first player to take all 10 wickets in a Test match innings, ten for 53 in the Australians' 2nd innings of the 4th Ashes Test at Old Trafford in 1956 (the only other bowler to take all 10 wickets is Anil Kumble of India in 1999). Having also taken 9 for 37 in the first innings, Laker's match bowling figures were 19 for 90: no other bowler has taken more than seventeen wickets in a first-class match. Laker was married to an Austrian who did not know much about cricket. On the day of his achievement when he arrived home, his wife asked him, "Jim, did you do something good today?" after she had taken hundreds of congratulatory telephone calls. Remarkably, Laker had also taken all 10 wickets in an innings for Surrey against the same Australians earlier in the season, the first time a bowler had taken all ten against the Australians since Ted Barratt did so in 1878.
Laker's effort was part of a record-breaking performance during the 1956 Ashes series: Laker's 46 wickets established a record for a 5-Test Ashes series which remains unbroken. It led to him being awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award in 1956, the first cricketer to win the award.
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The plaque on the side of the scoreboard has the following text.
This scorebox was rebuilt in 2001
and is dedicated to the memory of the great
Surrey and England off spin bowler
JIM LAKER
who began his career on this ground
as a Saltaire player in 1938