Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

Chapter Four Touring Australia for the first time ‘Why, he beams on you before and after your innings. The shorter your innings, the happier he is towards you.’ C.B.Fry Briggs was a late – and surprise –choice for Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury’s XI for the 1884/85 tour of Australia, when a number of more experienced players declined Shaw and Shrewsbury’s terms. In those days tours were run on a purely commercial basis – national selectors were not appointed until 1899. Briggs was the only Lancashire man among the twelve players, all of them Northern professionals, together with James Lillywhite junior, who umpired and took the field in a number of minor matches. There were no amateurs in the party, with the organisers believing that their claims for expenses would endanger the tour’s potential profitability. Notwithstanding the machinations over money, it was a major step forward for Briggs, who had not even been a remote possibility for the England side which Lancashire had chosen for the inaugural Old Trafford Test against Australia in July, 1884. Yorkshire’s Ted Peate, who in his early days was part of the touring Clown Cricketers side against whom Briggs’ father James had once appeared, had played for England in that match, while Peel went to Australia as the main slow left-armer. Now Briggs was on his way to Australia to play against a Combined Australia side and was determined to make the best of this golden opportunity. The tourists travelled on the SS Orient , leaving Plymouth on their long journey on 19 September and arriving at Port Adelaide early on the morning of 29 October, going on by train to Adelaide. They had had an unusually calm run through the Bay of Biscay and were able to disembark at Port Said where they played an odds match – where the teams were uneven both in numbers and ability – against a combined Army and Navy side on a matting wicket. It was obviously a difficult surface, England making 117 while the Army and Navy XXII were precariously placed at 40 for 11 at the close of the one-day game. Later some of the players were able avail themselves of a sightseeing tour of 22