Famous Cricketers No 75 - Arthur Haygarth

and was probably at his peak, he might justifiably have laid claim to being the third-best batsman in England. A 53 not out for the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s was unquestionably considered to be a performance of great distinction. The two batsmen above him in the 1857 averages, George Parr and George “Farmer” Bennett, were both soon to take part in pioneering tours of Australia. As the author notes, W.A.Bettesworth wrote in 1902 that Haygarth, in a later age, would probably have won a place in England’s Test XI by dint of his great patience and incomparable defence – unless Australia “rose to a man to bar him”. Well, no-one was able to bar Bailey, Barrington or Boycott, or Mackay or Lawry, so if Haygarth had been born a few years later, he and Dick Barlow of Lancashire might well have contrived to plunge Test cricket into terminal disrepute over a century ago. The photograph of Arthur Haygarth in the stance position (it was featured in Cricket in 1902) may be seen as slightly grotesque by modern eyes. He looks frail, his grip on the bat is not altogether convincing, and he is dressed in somewhat lurid costume. But let us not fall into the old trap. We should not judge our cricketers by their rigid posture in Victorian daguerreotypes or by their silly hats. They once moved. They hit boundaries (almost exclusively through the off side). And batsmen like Haygarth – not that there were many quite like him – could evidently play the forward defensive, with the back defence as their sole alternative, from the cry of “Play!” until stumps were drawn. Such determination, such character. Then, home to enter up the scores and scour the newspapers for match information from other regions – hours of further work, this time with the scratching quill pen. Despite his heart-felt inscriptions in that first volume of S & B , Arthur Haygarth must surely have been, on the whole, an enviably satisfied man. 4