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Just appointed as a fresh coach for Pakistani cricket team, Geoffrey Francis Lawson started his career in the last days of 1980. He was born on December 7, 1957 at Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia, so his current age is nearing almost 50 years. In his circle, he is als known as Henry after the Australian bush poet. During his career, he has played for Australia, Lancashire, and New South Wales.

Interestingly enough, Geoffrey Lawson is an optometrist by training. An optometrist or oculist is a person who is skilled in testing for defects of vision in order to prescribe corrective glasses. In the simple words he is some kind of an eye doctor. He received the spotlight with his outswing fast bowling and he got his fame started by getting Geoff Boycott, the legend of his time. There are many diseases which he could cure in Pakistani team, including the tunnel vision and blind spots.

Lawson made his test debut against New Zealand at Brisbane on Nov 28-30 in 1980. He made is One Day International debut againt Srilanka also in Brisbane on Dec 8-12 in 1989. Lawson played his last ODI against India at Bangalore on Oct 27, 1989, and he said goodbye to test cricket on Nov 23, 1980 when he played his last test match against New Zealand at Adelaide.

Lawson was right arm fast bowler. In his 46 test matches, he took 180 wickets with the average of 30, and with an economy of 2.96. 11 times he took 5 wickets in a test match, and it was 2 times that he took ten in a match. He bowled 11118 balls and gave away 5501 runs in the test format of the game. In his ODI career, he played 79 matches. He took 88 wickets with the best of 4/26. He never took 10 or 5 wickets in a match throughout his career. In ODIs his average was 29.45 with an economy of almost 30.

His batting wasn’t either brilliant or extraordinary. In his 52 innings of test matches he made 378 runs and in the ODIs he made just 378 runs with an average of 11. His highest in test matches was 74 and in ODIs his highest was 33.

Though as a cricketer Geoff Lawson wasn’t a legend, neither he has got any major records in his repertoire, but one could only hope that his tall, lanky and lively former bowler could inject some professionalism into the Pakistani cricket team.