Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

for wicket, taking 166 each, with Briggs’ victims costing him 15.89 apiece and Mold averaging 16.96. It was during this season that Briggs dismissed Arthur Shrewsbury in the game against Nottinghamshire at Manchester with a first innings delivery that was perhaps a forerunner of Shane Warne’s ‘ball of the century’ to dismiss England’s Mike Gatting on the same Old Trafford ground in the 1993 Test against Australia. Shrewsbury, who for a decade starting in the late 1880s was considered the finest professional batsman in England, was adept at playing the ball with his pads and his dismissal is described in great detail by the City News : ‘Shrewsbury, amongst other things, is the inventor of a style of playing the ball with his legs. Whenever a ball puzzles him or he, for any reason, feels uncomfortable about it, if it is not pitched straight he simply puts his leg before it and so keeps it out of the wickets.’ ‘The style is, if played with discretion, wonderfully effective from the point of view of sticking in. It breaks the bowler’s heart, it worries the umpire well nigh to death, and it will eventually cause a change in the rule of leg before wicket, as it most assuredly ought to do.’ ‘But in this case, Briggs, who was bowling with his head as well as with his hand and arm, completely beat the great leg blocker at his own game to the unbounded joy of everybody round the field. Shrewsbury, bothered by a peculiar ball which was gyrating and twisting about in mid-air in a way which was eminently puzzling and which was apparently likely, if unstopped to take the off stump, quietly put his right leg in such a position that the ball could not possibly reach that point.’ ‘But in doing this he left the leg stump unguarded and the ball, as if actually inspired by Briggs’ cunning, shot in between the batter’s legs and hit the leg wicket.’ ‘The incident was one which will serve for many a bit of cricket gossip in years to come, and was worth in itself, to your true enthusiast, a year’s waiting to see.’ The 1893 season was when the Australians toured this country, playing against three England sides, all of which were selected by the local ground authorities. Briggs was left out of the First Test at Lord’s, with MCC apparently deciding they needed only one all-rounder. They went for Peel, six years older than Briggs, perhaps because he was a more solid batsman. But the major factor must have been that he had already proved a thorn in the Australians’ side, taking 26 wickets against them in matches under various titles. It was the first time that Briggs had actually been Match double against Yorkshire 59