Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

Chapter Ten Mixed benefit ‘I don’t want to speak to you now my Lord.’ Johnny Briggs Briggs was awarded a benefit by his club in 1894, when he was still only 31. It was a deserved recognition of his talents, work ethic and loyalty. He had by then given stalwart service to the county for 15 seasons and was one of the game’s senior professionals. In fact, when in 1894, Wisden sought the views of players about the ‘follow-on’ controversy that was then taxing cricket’s administrators, Briggs was one of the three professional players to whom they turned. The benefit match was, until after the Second World War, the principal source of income for a player in his benefit season. Since then, of course, benefits go on for many months and include golf days, dinners and auctions usually organised by a benefit committee and often involving sponsored events. There are also regular collections around the players’ home ground during matches. Briggs didn’t have much luck with the weather – and Lord Hawke’s reaction to it – during his benefit match against Yorkshire as we shall see. But the extent of the damage to Briggs’ finances has been exaggerated, with perhaps the most extreme example being the comments by Mike Marqusee in his much praised book ‘Anyone but England’, first published in 1994, which asserts, even in its corrected second edition in 1998, that ‘Johnny Briggs, a popular Lancashire and England slow bowler, requested a benefit after his fourteenth year with the county and was told it was too early. A few years later, he suffered an epileptic seizure on the field and was committed, penniless, to Cheadle Asylum where he died at the age of thirty-nine.’ Overall the 1894 season proved another fruitful one for Briggs with the ball (145 wickets at 13.83) and his batting proved useful too (675 runs at 19.28). He played in 21 of Lancashire’s 23 first-class matches and in both of the prestige Gentlemen versus Players matches in London in July. He played in 15 championship 62