His final years were overshadowed by two allegations of ***ual abuse involving young girls, the second only months before his death from cancer. Cleared of both charges, he was nevertheless forced to sell some of his cricket memorabilia to meet his legal costs, and while the second court case was pending his wife died of a heart attack. He said bitterly just before he died that he would be remembered only for the charges and not for his cricket, but he will be proved wrong. There never has been a more aggressive spin bowler, wrote David Frith in The Slow Men, and the aggression came out in his captaincy, his famous full-throated appealing ( When Lock appeals at The Oval, as the old joke said, someone’s out at Lord’s.) and his marvellous catching. The spectacular ones, the sudden full-length dives, were the easy ones, recalled his Surrey team-mate Micky Stewart. His best were when he took the rockets, close in, without anyone noticing. Only W. G. Grace and Frank Woolley have taken more catches. Lock is also ninth in the list of all-time wicket takers with 2,844 at 19.23; 174 of those came in his 49 Tests, at 25.58. He was a volatile, vulnerable man but he was an astonishingly durable cricketer and the memory of that will endure too.