Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

triumphed by an innings and 230 runs, Australia succumbing for 100 and 169 in their two innings. It cut the home side’s series-winning margin to 2-1. Thus the tour ended in defeat. It had been financed by Lord Sheffield under Shaw’s management and was considered more ‘establishment’ than ‘commercial’. All the top players of the day apart from Shrewsbury and Gunn took part. The side was captained by W.G.Grace, who commanded a huge fee in spite of his amateur status. Briggs had been included in the 13, despite the presence of another slow left-armer Peel, although he was often played as a middle-order batsman and was in the side as an all-rounder, with Briggs employed as a specialist bowler. Although the side played eight eleven-a-side matches, which were afforded first-class status, they were also obliged to fulfil 19 games against odds sides, travelling across tracts of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, and venturing, for the first time, to Tasmania. Grace shared out the bowling more equitably than on some previous tours in these odds matches, but Briggs still managed to take 108 wickets at 6.04. However, against Twenty Four of Bowral, the home town many years later of the legendary Donald Bradman, Briggs bowled almost unchanged through two innings for a 24-wicket haul. As usual on these occasions, it was left to Wisden to put things into perspective, describing the home cricketers as a ‘poor lot’. A Test hat-trick 55