Mumbai: Very few remember him on the cricket pitch for he retired from the sport at the age of 29. With 18 wickets in five Tests, four wickets in the only ODI match he bowled, David ‘Syd’ Lawrence had just started threatening the batsmen. But in 1992 against New Zealand in Wellington, his knee cap crushed in the middle of a delivery stride which put an end to his career. He was untraceable all these years and in 2014, after 21 years, it has been revealed that he turned into a bodybuilder.
Lawrence nursed the injury and tried his best to make his way back in 1993 but his body was not cricket-friendly anymore.
(This is how he got injured in 1992)
Nobody knew that the same athlete would be at his best physical condition as a 50-year-old. He has been named the National Amateur Body Building Association’s West of England champion for the over-40s.
(This is what he has become now)
In an interview with Mirror, he said, “I went to a competition in my mid-forties with a friend of mine who was competing and I looked at the people on the stage and I thought, I can do this.”
His years of exercise as a fast bowler seems to have come useful.
“Before this, fast bowling was the most physically demanding thing I had done,” he added. “I have worked as a labourer, I’ve worked on building sites in Australia in the heat and put in a hard shift. But it is not the same as fast bowling.
“Bowling on a hot summer’s day is seriously tough, and at 5.30 when Goochie (Graham Gooch) comes up to you and says, ‘Syd, give me three more’ and you’re Âdehydrated, you’ve got cramp... but you’ve got to muster up something and that is physically demanding.”
However, Lawrence said that the hardest part of bodybuilding wasn’t the weights and heavy gymming but it was the 14-week diet chart he followed before the competition.
“You are getting your body down to zero percent fat, taking on no carbs, and that is how you get the aesthetic look that shows off every muscle.
“I must admit if I knew how strict the diet was when I started I probably wouldn’t have done it! It is torture.”
Lawrence is also a nightclub-owner and a restaurateur in Bristol.
