Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

Chapter Six Taking a hundred wickets for the first time ‘I always feels satisfied if I come out first or second in the bowling analysis and have an average of 20-odd runs at the end of the season; that ought to be a satisfactory result for anybody.’ Johnny Briggs Returning from Australia, Briggs settled down once more with Lancashire, playing in 17 matches in the 1887 season, scoring six fifties in a 736-run aggregate for an average of 27.25. He was the side’s leading run scorer. But his bowling took on a new dimension. Briggs sent down 5,521 balls for Lancashire – only Watson (6,130 deliveries) was utilised more – and was rewarded with 102 wickets at 16.90 each with nine five-wicket hauls and one ten-wickets-in-a-match performance. Watson wasn’t far behind him capturing exactly 100 wickets in the season. Taking 100 wickets in a season for Lancashire for the first time marked Briggs out as a serious bowler – in all he took 114 wickets that year –and only Lohmann (154 wickets) was ahead of him in the national list. For once there was no major touring side visiting these shores with the best of the foreign opposition a team of Canadian amateurs. For this reason domestic representative games became all-important. The biggest of these was MCC versus 39 On 8 June 1887, Briggs achieved the astonishing feat of six wickets in six balls playing at Nantwich in Cheshire for A.N.Hornby’s team against a team of 15 local cricketers from the neighbouring village of Minshull Vernon. The fixture marked the opening of a private cricket ground Hornby had laid out adjoining his home at Parkfield. Five of the wickets were taken before lunch and the sixth with the first ball after the interval. What is even more surprising is that all Briggs’ victims were clean bowled. He finished with 11 for 5 although some reports suggest his figures were, in fact, 17 for 11, and at one period he claimed 11 wickets for no runs. To add to his extraordinary bowling performance, Briggs also scored a hard-hitting 90.