Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

W.G.Grace. There are no reports that Briggs senior made any great contribution to this match, but it was to have great significance for Briggs junior, who was then an impressionable 11-year-old. In a report in the Hornsea Gazette in 1893, which appeared a few days after Johnny Briggs had helped win a memorable Roses match for Lancashire, the paper revealed that it was during a break in that 1874 Hornsea and District match that ‘young Briggs showed to the world that he had the makings of a first-class cricketer in him’. The article continued: ‘During luncheon on one of the three days W.G.Grace came on to the ground for some practice and one of the Southern players persuaded Briggs senior to put ‘Jack’ (young Briggs) on bowling against the famous Gloucestershire man. After a few balls by ‘Jack’, the Doctor seemed a little surprised at his wonderful bowling. Very soon he succeeded in taking the Champion’s wicket. The father of Briggs was told to take care of his son as he has all the qualities of making a good cricketer.’ At the end of that season James Briggs left Hornsea and although it is recorded that he did appear once against the exquisitely named touring team, the Clown Cricketers, a year later, the link with Hornsea seemed to be over as he moved first to Morley and then to Widnes, where the family lived, initially at 3 Gladstone Street in the town before moving to 30 Frederick Street. Widnes, although these days in the administrative county of Cheshire, was then part of Lancashire and the family’s move meant that Briggs was able to start his residential qualification to play for Lancashire. The residential qualification rule had been brought in less than two years earlier at a meeting of the counties at The Oval on 9 June, 1873. It was a rule that one of Briggs’ Old Trafford colleagues, John Crossland, would fall foul of several years later. Although Briggs senior may have severed his ties with Hornsea, the Briggs family certainly had not, and in 1876 Hornsea took on young Briggs as a professional despite the fact that he was just 13 years old. Young Briggs was pretty candid about his abilities as a cricketer at the time and in an interview with The Cricket Field in 1894 he said: ‘The club did not want a fully-fledged professional and they thought I might do, though I could only bowl eighteen yards. I was pretty straight but knew nothing about making the ball turn.’ It must have been a lonely existence for the young cricketer who lodged in Hornsea. 10 Where it all began