Stoddart’s
Men
A centralised Australian cricket control board was still some way in the future in 1894, but the trend for corporate backing of tours took off when Melbourne Cricket Club and the trustees of Sydney Cricket Ground (still more commonly referred to as ‘the Association ground’) combined to finance a visit by an English team in 1894–95. The reward was a very substantial profit of £7000, the result not of commercial sponsorship such as logos on players’ equipment and shirts or perimeter advertising or broadcasting fees, all of which lay many years in the future. The revenue 100 years ago came from gatemoney, and because the teams were attractive and played some wonderful cricket, ground attendance records were broken throughout Australia. The five Test matches were reported as never before, the narrative compelling, thanks to the long chain of incident and the colourful nature of the players who made it. The Pall Mall Gazette broke new ground by publishing—at riskily high expense—long cabled reports from the other side of the world, close on the heels of the action. It was hardly instantaneous, but it kept, in Wisden’s words, ‘lovers of the game in this country in closer touch with cricket in Australia than they had ever been before’. Even Queen Victoria, not renowned for her interest in cricket, became curious as the public excitement rose, and demanded to be kept up to date on the 1894–95 battle for the Ashes.
AE Stoddart was the chosen English leader. After Lord Sheffield’s refusal, ‘Stoddy’ was the man asked (in February 1894) by the Sydney and Melbourne authorities to raise a good side for the 12th (13th if the twin tours of 1887–88 are both counted) tour of Australia, the ninth to play Test matches. He did his best. There were refusals, of course, and the presence of FS Jackson, Arthur Shrewsbury (Stoddart felt unsure about his health), Billy Gunn, Bobby Abel, Lionel Palairet, HT Hewett, the Rev. William Rashleigh (all batsmen) and ‘Dick’ Attewell would have strengthened the party considerably. But the combination of 13 players—five amateurs and eight professionals—had all given good accounts of themselves in the 1894 English season and had implicitly pledged loyalty to their captain. As many as nine of them stood an imposing 6ft (183 cm) tall or better, and the average age was 29—a year older than it might have been but for the inclusion of Walter Humphreys, who, at 45, was almost the oldest English cricketer to tour Australia.
ANDREW ERNEST STODDART (Captain)__________Amateur
Born Westoe, County Durham, March II, 1863
Right-hand batsman, right-arm spin/medium-pace, good fielder
Middlesex 1885–1900 England (16 Tests, 1887–88 to 1897–98)
‘Drewy’ Stoddart—‘Stoddy’—finished the 1894–95 tour as the most popular English captain Australia had yet known, and would have remained warmly in the hearts of Australians just as Arthur Gilligan, Percy Chapman, Gubby Allen and Freddie Brown were to be in Ashes tours that followed, were it not for the disastrous—in several senses—tour which Stoddart undertook three years later. At the conclusion of the 1897–98 tour, his fourth and last, affected by the death of his mother and bruised by defeat and persistent, savage barracking, he spoke out against those who had ‘poured insults’ upon him and his team throughout the tour. He was suddenly seen in a new light, perhaps as one of the earliest of ‘whingeing Poms’.
The 1894–95 tour, though, was a glorious passage for him. He had been to Australia in 1887–88, having made the highest score ever recorded to date in 1886, a dashing 485 for Hampstead in a London club match against Stoics, and also established a glowing reputation as an England rugby three-quarter and captain. On his second tour of Australia, in 1891–92, he had scored 134 in 230 minutes in the Adelaide Test, having another of his many big stands with WG Grace (15 years his senior) and looking every bit as polished. By this, his third tour, he was already a favourite. His manner was genial and courteous, which went well with his stature as an elegant champion at two sports.
Born in the North-East, little Drewy moved with his family to London when he was 12. His father was a man of several business interests, including coal-mining, land and wine. The boy was quickly attracted to sport, which was to grip him for the rest of his life. He was capped by England at rugby for the first time in 1884–85, when he was 21, and made his first-class cricket debut for Middlesex a few months later, having made centuries in club cricket with style and almost monotonous regularity. Soon he had become a drawcard at Lord’s comparable to Denis Compton a few generations later.
Stoddart played in his first Test match when the two English teams of 1887–88 pooled resources and played Australia at Sydney in the February, a few weeks after he had helped himself to 285 against Eighteen Melbourne Juniors. He seldom threw his wicket away upon reaching 100.
Another fateful event befell him on that first tour. He met a young woman, already married, whom he was eventually to wed almost 20 years later, when he was 43. His name had been linked to many women across the years.
At the end of the 1887–88 Australia tour, Stoddart stayed on to play with the first British rugby touring team and became its leader when RL Seddon drowned while sculling on the Hunter River. The glamorous figure of Stoddart now conquered rugby grounds and even Aussie Rules fixtures—though not all his teammates could adapt to the alien regime. He pocketed a handsome fee, though this was kept secret at the time. After more football in the 1888–89 English winter, ‘Stoddy’ got back to cricket again, and in 1890 he actually chose to play for Middlesex against Kent in preference to England against Australia at Lord’s, and then again for his county against Yorkshire while the second Test was played. He made himself available for the last Test, at Old Trafford, but it was completely washed out. No question of exhaustion through too many international appearances in those days.
Rugby still had a grip on him, and in 1890–91 he captained the first Barbarians XV. Then, in 1891, he made the highest score of the season, 215 not out against Lancashire at Old Trafford, and was shortly on the ship to Australia, his captain WG Grace.
Stoddart learned from this 1891–92 tour, when Test cricket began to take on a shape that would be recognisable to latterday spectators. He would never lose his sense of joy at hitting the ball not only to the pickets as often as possible but sometimes clean over them, but now a maturity descended over his game. He saw now Abel on one side and Bannerman (Alick) on the other shunned risk and therefore were hardly ever disappointed by dismissal to rash shots. His stature grew with his first Test century in the final match, at Adelaide Oval. When next he was to tread Australian soil, it would be as England’s captain.
He was now one of the aristocracy of English batsmanship. He had all the shots, and a natural poise to go with them. When he and Grace batted together, for MCC or the Gentlemen or England, Stoddart often presented the smoother sight. His rugby was drawing to a close, with straps and bandages needed for knees, ankles and an elbow, and a bad game against Scotland to end his international career. But the 1893 Australians were soon taking the field, and ‘Stoddy’ warmed up with a century in each innings for Middlesex against Nottinghamshire, the first twin hundreds at Lord’s since 18 17, 76 years before. Verily’, stated a magazine of the time, ‘we are lucky who are living to see such things.’
Stoddart found himself leading England in the Lord’s Test, WG having broken a finger. The match was drawn, rain falling on the final (third) day just as Stoddart had made the first-ever declaration in a Test match. He had scored only 24 and 13, falling both times to CTB Turner, who was always a problem for him. But Shrewsbury made 106 and 81, and FS Jackson, whose service to his country in real life prevented him from ever playing in Australia, stroked 91 on debut as England maintained command. Australia’s star was the dashing little Victorian, Harry Graham, who chose his maiden Test innings, at Lord’s of all venues, to race to his first century in first-class cricket.
In the Oval Test, Stoddart further raised his reputation with an opening stand of 151 with WG Grace, though the younger man had much luck (The Bulletin claimed he was dropped 11 times in his 83). This Test was won by England by an innings, and a draw in the third Test ensured that they would go to Australia in a year’s time as holders of the Ashes. Stoddart scored 127 for Thornton’s XI against the Australians at Scarborough as the summer drew to a close, and then posted his 2000th run, only the third ever to do so, after Grace and Gunn. He was close to being regarded as the world’s best batsman at 30.
He was certainly regarded as a man of influence and energy, the qualities needed in any international tour organiser and leader, and when Lord Sheffield declined a second opportunity to take a side to Australia, early in 1894 the men who ran cricket in Melbourne and Sydney issued an invitation to AE Stoddart. Throughout that damp 1894 season he assessed possible recruits for the tour and gradually built up a group of players who seemed to be fit for the exacting experience that awaited them.
So what kind of man was ‘Stoddy’? The circumstances surrounding his world-record innings of 485 in 1886 go a long way to explaining: ‘The Masher’, as he was sometimes known, because of his sartorial elegance, went out dancing the night before, and then sat down for a long session of poker. The young stockbroker found himself winning, so he played on rather than walk away with his friends’ money. His play grew wilder as one round of jackpots followed another. He kept winning. Then the signs of dawn light appeared through the windowpane. No point in going to bed now, so they had warm baths and piled into hansom-cabs to the local swimming-pool to freshen up. A hearty breakfast followed, and then he strolled down to the Hampstead ground and was opening the batting at 11.30. Just after 5 o’clock, Stoddart broke the world record of 419 not out and then gave his only chance, a screaming on-drive, which the wretched Stoics fielder muffed. On he went, until at 485 he sent a ball so high into the summer sky that they were on their third run before the catch was safely held. Hampstead finished with 813—no declarations were then permitted—and Stoics did not get a bat.
Was ‘Stoddy’ now keen to get some sleep? ‘Well, perhaps I was, but we had a lawn-tennis match, a four, on that evening, so I had to play that. Then I had another tub, and had to hurry too, because we had a box at the theatre and a supper party afterwards. But after that I got to bed all right, and it wasn’t nearly three!’
Three days after his 485, Stoddart hit 207 for Hampstead, and two days after that he was batting for Middlesex in Gloucester and getting out to a WG long-hop for 98. Many a bowler must have hoped, a couple of years later, that there was truth in the rumours that Drewy Stoddart might be about to settle in either America or Australia.
JOHN BRIGGS____________________Professional
Born Sutton-in-Ashfield, Notts, October 3, 1862
Slow left-arm bowler, lower-order right-hand batsman, fine
cover fielder
Lancashire 1879–1900 England (33 Tests, 1884–85 to 1899)
Bubbly little (5ft 5ins) Johnny Briggs was a favourite almost as much in Australia, where he toured six times (this was the fifth), as with his local fans at Old Trafford. He made his first-class debut at the tender age of 16, and it was some time before his often-magical, teasing spin bowling became an even greater asset than his batting and brilliant fielding. He was a talented enough batsman to make 10 centuries, including one against Australia in the New Year Test at Melbourne in 1885. But he was to be remembered best of all for taking over 2000 first-class wickets, including all 10 for 55 against Worcestershire in his final summer of cricket, 1900.
In Tests, he spun out 118 batsmen at just under 18 apiece, shrewd behind the chuckle, and capitalising on some weak opposition in South Africa in two Tests of questionable status in 1888–89, when he took a record 15 wickets in a day (7 for 17 and 8 for 11) at Newlands, Cape Town.
To Briggs fell the distinction of becoming the first bowler to take 100 Test wickets, when he had Jarvis caught behind in the fourth Test of this 1894–95 series, at Sydney. It would have given this much-loved rolypoly cricketer as much amusement as joy, as when he did the hat-trick in the Sydney Test on the 1891–92 tour.
Among his other triumphs was the Lord’s Test of 1886, which he secured for England by an innings by taking 5 for 29 and 6 for 45, with over half his 72 four-ball overs being maidens, such was his accuracy. WG thought that Briggs often tried too much for variation in the course of an over, having the ability to do so much with the ball by way of pace-change, flight and either-way turn.
Though Cardus detected the deeper solemnity of the clown about Briggs, it was his bounciness allied to his skill and the experience of previous tours of Australia which gave Stoddart to believe that in him he had a gem. Besides himself and Briggs, only Philipson (once) and Peel (three times) had previously seen Australia.
WILLIAM BROCKWELL______________________Professional
Born Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, January 21, 1865
Right-hand batsman and medium-pace bowler, slip fieldsman Surrey 1886–1903 England (7 Tests, 1893 to 1899)
Billy Brockwell earned himself a trip to Australia by timing his best-ever season to perfection. It came in 1894, when he built upon a promising 1893 season to such an extent that he topped the national averages with 1491 runs at an average of 38.23. His five centuries—in a summer when runmaking overall was at a moderate level—were all made at The Oval, where his popularity skyrocketed.
He seemed to have most of the admirable qualities known to man: ‘gentlemanly bearing, geniality and modesty’ according to WG. And, with the bat, he liked to play an attacking game, preferably on a pitch of ordinary pace to slow. For years after signing with Surrey he made unspectacular progress, but his experience was being gained in the best of company, for the county was teeming with great names, and won the County Championship eight times (once shared) in the nine seasons from 1887.
In 1893, Brockwell had made over 800 runs and taken 80 wickets, crowning the year with selection by England for the first time, though he did little in the drawn Test against Australia at The Oval, and blotted his reputation by missing Alick Bannerman at slip.
The talent was undoubtedly there, but sometimes a certain wavering of application was suspected. Here was a man who loved travel, the theatre, photography, cycling, and writing—he wrote during this 1894–95 tour for Sporting Sketches, the Windsor Magazine, Australian Review of Reviews, and Cricket, with a slightly florid style—and in later years around Surrey a claim circulated that ‘Brocky’ also loved Tom Richardson’s wife. His county and England team-mate’s wife, mother of his three children, was to leave Tom around the turn of the century.
Brockwell’s charm, coupled with that timely season of supremacy, 1894, had Stoddart writing his name down with eager anticipation.
JOHN THOMAS BROWN_____________________Professional
Born Great Driffield, Yorkshire, August 20, 1869
Right-hand opening batsman, occasional slow bowler, fine fieldsman
Yorkshire 1889–1904 England (8 Tests, 1894–95 to 1899)
The nuggety Yorkshireman Jack Brown was the last man chosen by Stoddart for the tour, following the withdrawal of Abel, and, as it turned out, his selection ultimately had the greatest bearing on the outcome.
A heavy smoker as well as heavy run-scorer, Brown had a developing heart condition to go with his asthma, and trouble with his feet had brought him nearer the wicket, where he now usually fielded most reliably at point. The 1894 summer found him making over 1000 runs for the first of 10 successive seasons, years which were to earn him global accolades for scores of 311 at Bramall Lane, Sheffield and 300 at Chesterfield, the latter being part of a new world-record first-wicket partnership of 554 with John Tunnicliffe. Brockwell and Abel had snatched the previous record from them by one run the previous season.
Brown was the personification of ‘Yorkshire grit’. On the short side but powerfully-built, he excelled at the cut and the pull, and somehow seemed at his best when pitch conditions and the match situation were most difficult. He had his own special way of dealing with the short ball on leg stump, and that was to ‘half-hit’ it—far from artistic but highly effective.
FRANCIS GILBERTSON JUSTICE FORD_____________________Amateur
Born Paddington, London, December 14, 1866
Left-hand batsman and slow bowler, slip fielder
Cambridge University 1887–90, Middlesex 1886–99
England (5 Tests, 1894–95)
Tall and slender Francis Ford foreshadowed two famous names yet to come: Australia’s Hunter Hendry for his height and shared nickname of ‘Stork’, and England’s Frank Woolley for his power and elegance as a left-hander who so often conquered fast bowling.
Ford was the youngest of seven cricketing brothers educated at Repton, and a member of a distinguished sporting family. Three of the brothers, including FGJ, were Cambridge Blues, Francis, in his final year, contributing 191 to the University’s 703 for 9—then an English record—against Sussex at Hove.
A Middlesex colleague of Stoddart’s, ‘Alphabet’ Ford, as he was also sometimes known, had played in only five Championship matches in the 1894 season, but batted convincingly enough to win a berth on the Australian tour which might not have been his had any of four or five other batsmen been available.
Being an asset in the social setting did Ford’s prospects no harm, and his batting potential could well have paid big dividends on Australia’s hard pitches. He was, after all, the kind of hitter who could swing a match in an hour, which was the time taken for him to reach a century against the Philadelphians at Lord’s in 1897.
LESLIE HEWITT GAY_____________________Amateur
Born Brighton, Sussex, March 24, 1871
Wicketkeeper, right-hand lower-order batsman
Cambridge University 1891–93, Somerset 1894, Hampshire 1900 England (l Test, 1894–95)
A Hampshire player firstly before that county became first-class, Leslie Gay first found fame at Cambridge, where he represented the University as a wicketkeeper and also as a soccer goalkeeper. His cricket promise was rewarded with selection for the Gentlemen against the Players in 1892, although the Oval match was always seen as less prestigious than the Lord’s fixture.
Before long he was being capped by England at soccer, and although he played only four matches for Somerset in 1894, he was selected for Australia by Stoddart, and anticipated becoming a rare double international. The fact that his captain can have had only the briefest sight of him in action—Middlesex v Somerset, Lord’s, 1894—suggests that strong recommendation might have come from elsewhere, unless Gay, the ‘baby’ of the team, struck ‘Stoddy’ as being good social material, which has always been some sort of factor in English cricket.
WALTER ALEXANDER HUMPHREYS___________________Professional
Born Southsea, Hampshire, October 28, 1849
Underhand lob bowler, lower-order batsman
Sussex 1871–96, Hampshire 1900
Grey-haired, cheerful and only a month from his 45th birthday when the team sailed for Australia, Walter Humphreys was the biggest gamble of all. He was the last of the underhand bowlers to take big quantities of wickets, but would Australian batsmen, on firm ground and under sweltering sun, become impatient and succumb to this old man’s wiles?
A bits-and-pieces player in his early years with Sussex, Humphreys joined the dwindling ranks of the lob bowlers around 1880, and embarrassed three members of the Australian touring side in taking the hat-trick against them for his county. He embarrassed three more four years later when he repeated the feat, the victims this time being McDonnell, Giffen and Scott, top batsmen all. In 1888 he haunted the Australians again with 5 for 21 and 4 for 19 as Sussex pulled off an historic victory, so that Stoddart may not have been anything like alone in believing that the cunning old fox had a mystical hold over the Aussies. ‘Even when I had made 200 runs,’ said the 1882 Australian captain Billy Murdoch, ‘I could not tell from watching his hand which way he meant to turn the ball.’
Humphreys’ greatest season was 1893, when he pocketed 122 wickets for Sussex in all county matches at 16 runs apiece, taking eight in an innings three times. One of those occasions involved Middlesex, at Hove, where Stoddart escaped his trickery while making 95 but must have been impressed by the veteran’s stamina and repertoire. Nor, as he rode his tricycle around the county, was Humphreys a stranger to the phenomenon of taking all 10 wickets in an innings. For his club, Brighton Brunswick, he did it three times during the 1880s.
WILLIAM HENRY LOCKWOOD_______________Professional
Born Old Radford, Notts, March 25, 1868
Right-arm fast bowler, middle-order batsman
Nottinghamshire 1886–87, Surrey 1889–1904 England (12 Tests, 1893 to 1902)
The ranks of the fast bowlers have always reverberated with temperamental members of the fraternity. Bill Lockwood was one of the most volatile. He was as ‘on-off as John Snow of a much later generation, and just as terrifying when his heart was in his work and the rhythm was there. His best year, in numerical terms, was 1892, when he took 151 wickets at a mere 13.60 each, better than either of his two marvellous team-mates, Lohmann and Richardson, the trio bowling Surrey to another Championship.
Surrey—and England—needed his bowling more than his batting, but if he had been solely a batsman he might well have attained international status on that count. Though very seldom batting high in the order, he made 15 centuries in first-class cricket, a lovely drive against the wider off-side ball being the choice shot.
His run-up was not long, and the bounding approach was smooth and easy. Sometimes he was no-balled for touching the return crease, so wide of the line was his usual delivery. Once it left his hand, the ball might hang in the air slightly, enticing a return catch, or, more often, flash in from outside off stump. Murdoch, Fry and Ranjitsinhji were among those who thought Lockwood to be the greatest fast bowler of his time.
With 150 low-cost wickets in 1894, he was a prize asset for Stoddart to have in his Australian expedition, and his place in history was already secure, with Tom Richardson, as the first pair of fast bowlers to win matches by their combined, relentless force.
ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL MACLAREN_________________________Amateur
Born Manchester, Lancashire, December 1, 1871
Right-hand opening batsman, slip fieldsman
Lancashire 1890–1914 England (35 Tests, 1894–95 to 1909)
Educated at Harrow School, Archie MacLaren was now about to embark on a long Test career which would bring him triumph and controversy in fairly equal measure. A man of independent mind and arrogant manner not only at the batting crease, he came to symbolise the Golden Age of cricket, which corresponded exactly with his period with Lancashire, whom he captained from 1894 to 1907, apart from 1897–98. With his cap-peak almost to the bridge of his nose, moustache bristling, bat held high in readiness, and a dismissiveness both physically and verbally about him, he was a dominant figure.
MacLaren hit a century on his first-class debut when still only 18, and in the season after this first Australian tour of his he batted his way to the world record with 424 against Somerset, a mark which stood for 27 years before Ponsford’s 429 for Victoria against Tasmania pushed it into second place.
He had all the strokes and played them with his own personal panache, looking to score off the back foot as much as from his charging drives, with the late-cut a specialty.
If his name is to become immortal he would owe it to fellow Lancastrian Neville Cardus, the patron saint of cricket-writing, who dubbed him the Noblest Roman and never tired of speaking of MacLaren’s ‘grandeur’, batsmanship which was ‘a classical education because of its magnificent outlines’. Most memorably, he liked to describe how Archie ‘dismissed the ball from his presence’.
ROBERT PEEL________________________________Professional
Born Churwell, Leeds, Yorkshire, February 12, 1857
Slow left-arm bowler, lower-order left-hand batsman
Yorkshire 1882–97 England (20 Tests, 1884–85 to 1896)
There may have been some late-Victorian cricket professionals who could match Bobby Peel’s hard-playing and hard-drinking propensities, but not many. He was in the unique succession of slow left-arm bowlers produced by Yorkshire—Peate preceded him and Rhodes, Verity and Wardle followed—and took 1775 wickets at 16.20 in a career cut short by his misbehaviour. Over 120 times he took five or more wickets in an innings, with 9 for 22 his best figures, against Somerset at Headingley in 1895. He regularly potted his 100 wickets in a season, and, given the opportunity, made runs, his unbeaten 210 against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 1896 being described by one enthusiastic pundit as the finest innings yet played by a left-hander.
Peel was to become the first England bowler to take 100 wickets against Australia, and a century later his rate is still second only to Australia’s Charlie Turner among the 17 bowlers of both countries in the elite list. Typically for a slow left-armer, he could be lethal on turf saturated by rain—no uncommon thing in days of unprotected pitches. In his very first Test, at Adelaide in 1884–85, Peel had taken some of his eight wickets with the help of a treacherously sodden track, and three years later he and Lohmann, five wickets apiece, bowled Australia out for 42 and 82 on a sticky surface at Sydney. A few months later, back in England, in August 1888, Peel schemed up even better figures with 7 for 31 and 4 for 37, again after some heavy rain, Australia this time losing 18 wickets before lunch on a second day that helped establish Old Trafford as a haven for bowlers more times than not.
Peel was ‘like a terrier on a rat’ when he identified a batsman’s weakness, according to MacLaren. His spin, his trajectory, his speed were all applied according to the needs of pitch and opposing batsman. His cunning was legendary. From his short run-up, Peel, with a bit of a flourish, would hide his bowling arm behind him and then ‘fairly whip the ball down’. It could be torture of the slow kind, but just as penetrative as the fire-and-brimstone variety.
HYLTON PHUJPSON_________________________Amateur
Born Tynemouth, Northumberland, June 8, 1866
Wicketkeeper, lower-order right-hand batsman
Oxford University 1887–89, Middlesex 1895–98 England
(5 Tests, 1891–92 to 1894–95)
Born, like Stoddart, in the North-East, Philipson was selected for the 1894–95 tour as first-choice wicketkeeper, having toured Australia three years earlier on the Sheffield/Grace expedition. He was a noted allround sportsman at Eton and Oxford, showing such skill while at the University that he was chosen to play for the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s and The Oval in 1887. In that season, at Chiswick, he made 150 against Middlesex, putting on 340 with KJ Key and doubtless impressing the toiling Middlesex bowlers, one of whom was AE Stoddart.
‘Punch’ Philipson went off to India in 1889 with the first-ever English team to tour the subcontinent, and was deputy to Gregor MacGregor on the 1891–92 Australian tour, making his Test debut in the last match, at Adelaide, won by England by an innings. Perhaps Stoddart considered him a lucky player.
It took a very fast bowler to drive him back from behind the stumps. His wicketkeeping style was confident in manner, with a certain gracefulness about it. Lord Hawke described Philipson as ‘a lovable personality’.
THOMAS RICHARDSON__________________________Professional
Born Byfleet, Surrey, August 11, 1870
Right-arm fast bowler
Surrey 1892–1904, Somerset 1905 England (14 Tests, 1893 to 1897–98)
‘Honest Tom’, with his gypsy blood, curly dark hair, and willingness to bowl as fast as he could till he dropped (though he never did drop), was adored by Surrey followers and admired by all opponents. There was a chivalry about him that set him apart, and his strength and great heart placed him on the path to such a phenomenal haul of wickets that for years to come he was regarded by the majority as the best English fast bowler of all.
In only 14 Test matches he took 88 wickets, starting with 10 at Old Trafford in 1893 on his first appearance, and including 54 on his two Australian tours. Over the four seasons 1894 to 1897, Richardson took a staggering total of 1005 wickets, including 290 in 1895. Six times in his career he took 15 wickets in a match, and it did not take his 10 for 45 against Essex in 1894, when he took 196 wickets at the pittance of 10 apiece, to convince Stoddart that he was a certainty for the Australian trip.
He liked the ground to be firm and dry beneath his great boots, and the climax of his run to the wicket came with a leap and a powerful shoulder action, the wrist and fingers applying a lot of off-cut to the ball. His ‘breakback’ (fast offcutter) was notorious, and got the better of most of his opponents sooner or later. He sought to bowl people out, was accurate, and—in England, at least—seldom dropped short. Nor did he try to be clever with pace-change. He was as honest as his high leading arm.
Earlier in his career, suspicion had been cast on the legitimacy of his bowling action, but if there was a kink in his bowling arm, he soon eliminated it. After he had taken 9 for 47 against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, with the grinders on the terraces barracking him mercilessly, one of them was asked if they resented his success because of any wrongness in his action. ‘We wish the booger did throw,’ came the response, ‘cos then he wouldn’t be the booger that he is!’
ALBERT WARD____________________________Professional
Born Waterloo, Leeds, Yorkshire, November 21, 1865
Right-hand opening batsman, occasional right-arm slow bowler, reliable outfielder
Yorkshire 1886, Lancashire 1889–1904 England (7 Tests, 1893 to 1894–95)
Although no higher than 29th in the national averages in 1894, with 1176 runs at 25.02, Albert Ward was already regarded as one of the soundest batsmen in the land, an ideal component for the touring side to Australia. Tall and calm, patient and determined, he was to average 30.95 in his long career with Lancashire, and it surprised many of his contemporaries that he did not win more than his seven Test caps.
Ward was the prototype opener: no silly risks, settle in, wear ‘em down, give the innings a firm spinal column. He liked the cut shot, and played back or forward with a perpendicular bat. Only when he suddenly decided to hit over mid-on did he seem to have a weakness in concentration; but this was a rarity.
On the infrequent occasions when he bowled, he actually sent down a freak ball which years later was identified as a wrong’un, the back-of-the-hand opposite to the legbreak which was developed and given respectability by Bosanquet.
Lord Hawke, monarch of Yorkshire cricket, never forgave the Lancashire scout who lured Ward away, over the Pennines. Although Ward was not under contract to the county of his birth, he was playing for the 2nd XI when the traditional enemy assessed his potential and, in His Lordship’s words, ‘stole him and bribed him’. The move was profoundly to Lancashire’s—and once or twice to England’s—benefit.
The Englishmen in their tour uniforms of dark blue with red, white and light-blue stripes, Standing: AC MacLaren, FGJ Ford, R Peel, T Richardson, A Ward, LH Gay; seated: W Brockwell, AE Stoddart, J Briggs, H Philipson; in front: JT Brown, WA Humphreys. The accident-prone Lockwood is missing from the group.
