Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

1902), English Sports (2 September, 1893), Cricket Field newspaper (12 May, 1894) and Bailey’s Magazine (June, 1895). Briggs’ nephew, Jim Briggs, of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, was a collector of Briggs cricketana. Unfortunately, his collection was lost after his death in the 1970s. In November 2005, BBC Radio 4’s Making History programme featured an item about Briggs, presented by Sue Cook and featuring Malcolm Lorimer. Cook, talking about England’s forthcoming tour to Pakistan told listeners that ‘Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff came from a long line of successful Lancastrian cricketers, but none has a story as moving as Johnny Briggs’. Reporter Ivan Howlett, who visited Old Trafford and Briggs’ grave at Stretford Cemetery during the course of the programme, described Briggs as ‘a hero on the same scale as Lancashire’s Andrew Flintoff’. I have consulted the following books: Don Ambrose, Liverpool & District Cricketers 1882-1947 , 2002 (ACS Publication) Jean Barclay, A Caring Community , 1992 R.G.Barlow, Forty Seasons of First-Class Cricket , 1908, re-printed 2002 C.J.Bartlett, Eddie Paynter: His Record Innings-by-Innings , 2006 (ACS Publication) Brian Bearshaw, From the Stretford End, 1990 Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket , 1999 Robert Brooke and David Goodyear, A Who’s Who of Lancashire Cricket, 1991 Neville Cardus, Days in the Sun, 1924 Roy Cavanagh, The White Flash, undated Joseph Connolly, The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Constraint, 1856 Michael Down, Archie , 1981 David Frith, England versus Australia, 1993 David Frith, The Slow Men, 1984 W.G.Grace, WG: Cricketing Reminiscences and Personal Recollections, 1899 (re-printed 1980) Dean Hayes, Lancashire County Cricket Club: an A-Z, 1997 Keith Hayhurst, A pictorial history of Lancashire County Cricket Club, 2000 W.E.Howard, Fifty Years’ Cricket Reminiscences of a Non-Player, 1928 John Kay, A History of County Cricket: Lancashire, 1972 107