Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

interment in a coffin made from whisky cases. He was only 26. Like Briggs, it was officially recorded that Bowden’s death was due to an attack of epilepsy. However, a fall from his cart, leading to Bowden being trampled underfoot by his own oxen, may well have contributed to the young man’s demise. Life was much sweeter for Bowden’s fellow-captain Aubrey Smith, who played in just the one Test as well as for Cambridge University and Sussex. He survived reading about his own death from pneumonia in the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser to become a Hollywood actor, starring alongside such screen legends as Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Ronald Colman and Gary Cooper. Standing more than 6ft tall and with his fine moustache, Aubrey Smith, who later became Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, was one of the most instantly recognisable faces in the movies. He played a series of colonels, generals and majors with great aplomb. He was knighted in 1944 and died at the ripe old age of 85 – ironically from pneumonia – in Beverly Hills, California in 1948, where he had helped set up the Hollywood cricket club. Although Briggs’ tour will most be remembered for his devastating performance in the Second Test, he also had astonishing success in the odds matches. At Port Elizabeth, against an Eastern District XXII, his first innings haul was 16 for 94 and he returned a scarcely believable 27 for 23 (15 for 4 and 12 for 19) against Twenty Two of Cape Mounted Rifles at King William’s Town. Once again, he proved a willing workhorse for his captain and in the 37 innings in which he bowled he continued at one end, unchanged, in 21 of 46 Taking a hundred wickets for the first time Briggs possessed amazing reserves of stamina. For Lancashire he bowled unchanged throughout a match with Barlow v Gloucestershire at Liverpool in 1888; five times with Mold v Sussex at Hove, 1891; v Kent at the Angel Ground, Tonbridge, 1892; v Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, 1895; v Middlesex at Lord’s, 1895 and v Leicestershire at Grace Road, Leicester, 1895. In the latter two matches, Briggs and Mold displayed remarkable durability as the games were played in the same week, Briggs sending down 94.3 five-ball overs and Mold bowling 95 overs. Briggs also bowled unchanged in tandem with Alec Watson v Sussex at Old Trafford, 1890, in several matches with minor counties and against Scotland at Edinburgh in 1895. He also bowled unchanged with Lohmann for Shrewsbury’s XI against Australia at Sydney in 1887/88.