Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

only two men – one of them Briggs, obviously desperate to prolong proceedings – getting into double figures. Despite Briggs’ best efforts with the ball – he took 5 for 62 –Yorkshire led by a more than useful 102 runs on first innings. Lancashire fell four runs short of making the visitors bat again, being bowled out for 98 and the match ended before lunch on the second day. When Briggs came in to bat, the match had all but run away from Lancashire and Hawke, fielding at point, attempted to tell Briggs how sorry he was at the turn of events. Briggs famously retorted: ‘I don’t want to speak to you now my Lord.’ It took Briggs a lot of persuading not to return to Hawke his donation of one guinea to the benefit fund. Despite Briggs’ anger on the day, in later years he and Hawke, a man who was said never to hold a grudge, were very much on speaking terms. Hawke, although himself born in Lincolnshire, was nevertheless a fierce advocate of Yorkshire’s ‘born-in-the-county’ policy. As a player and later as an administrator he was for more than 50 years one of the game’s major figures. He captained Yorkshire for 28 seasons, during which time they won eight championships, and later served at various times as president, treasurer and trustee of MCC. The early finish to the Yorkshire match was a financial body blow to Briggs, whose collection raised £1,000 when he must have been expecting close to double that amount. Briggs’ Lancashire colleague Richard Pilling had taken his benefit in 1889 after 13 years’ service behind the stumps and the sum of £1,500 was raised from a match between the North and South at Old Trafford in July. And, much to Briggs’ chagrin, Peel’s benefit, played less than three months after the Lancashire man’s own benefit, the August Bank Holiday return match at Park Avenue, Bradford between Yorkshire and Lancashire, produced an even better return of almost £2,000. There was a third clash between Lancashire and Yorkshire that season – a first-class match but outside the championship– at the Scarborough Festival, starting on 3 September, billed as XI of Yorkshire versus XI of Lancashire. Lord Hawke captained Yorkshire, but Briggs was not in the Lancashire line-up. Perhaps he didn’t want another confrontation with his lordship so soon after their previous contretemps. There is no extant record of what Briggs had to say about missing this game although a perfectly innocent explanation might have been that he was getting ready to leave on Stoddart’s tour to Australia, which was due to depart 15 days after the scheduled end of the festival fixture. There was 64 Mixed benefit