Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

Chapter Twelve Bowling Lancashire to their first official title ‘No better all-round man than Briggs, to sustain his form for so long, has ever represented us, and no one is known better all over the world.’ – A.N. ‘Monkey’ Hornby Stoddart’s tourists returned to Tilbury in early May 1895, again aboard the Ophir . They received a welcome almost as emotional as the farewell afforded them by a flotilla of small boats and well-wishers on the shoreline as the Ophir had pulled away from her moorings on a rainy day in Adelaide six weeks earlier. While they were abroad English first-class cricket had undergone a major transformation. Arising from various meetings during the winter, the county championship had been expanded from nine to 14 clubs, with the introduction or reintroduction of Derbyshire, Essex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire. The leading sides, including Lancashire, had organised 20 or more fixtures in the competition. This meant that their professionals had more or less full-time employment, playing cricket, from the beginning of May to the end of August. Many of the minor representative fixtures, which had once provided a major chunk of Briggs’ playing season, had disappeared. It meant there were fewer opportunities for amateurs to play in occasional matches, and wickets became much harder to take. The scale of change can be seen in Lancashire’s own returns in the championship. In 1894, the county scored 4,721 runs at 19.11 and took 279 wickets at 15.33 in the competition. However, in 1895, they scored 7,838 runs at 23.60 and took 385 wickets at 16.30. By the turn of the century the leading counties expected their batsmen to score 10,000 championship runs, and their bowlers to take 400 wickets in the competition, costing around 25 runs apiece. Above all else the season of 1895 was the year of W.G.Grace. He scored 2,346 first-class runs and compiled nine centuries, including his ‘hundredth hundred’. Even though he had not taken 69