Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

below-strength team, containing nine amateurs, including a doctor and a vicar. The latter couldn’t provide any divine intervention, particularly when MacLaren had reached ‘only’ 262 with Henry Stanley failing to cling on to a very difficult chance from a full-blooded drive to mid-on. He offered another chance when past 400 – a vicious straight drive off one of Lionel Palairet’s lobs. During the course of his marathon effort, MacLaren and Arthur Paul put on 363 for the second wicket, advancing the score from 141 for 1 to 504 for 2. When MacLaren was finally caught in the deep with the score on 792, Briggs came to the wicket and, scoring all Lancashire’s last nine runs, took the total past 800 for the first time in county cricket history. When Somerset batted, he and Mold swept away the demoralised opposition twice for 143 and 206, taking nine wickets each. Briggs’ own batting in this season was distinctly modest. For the first time since 1882 he failed to score a fifty, and by the end the season was regularly going in at eight or nine. He did not play in either of the Gentlemen versus Players matches in London, with Peel taking the place he might have filled. He was, however, reunited with his colleagues from Stoddart’s side that had toured Australia in festival matches at Hastings, playing before ‘vast crowds’ in the final fixtures of the season. Apart from helping England to that remarkable win at Sydney, Briggs’ form on that 1894/95 tour wasn’t exactly sparkling, but there were no signs that his bowling was on the wane in the domestic arena and in the 1895 season he captured 124 wickets at 15.46. The Australians were in England in 1896, playing 34 matches, all of them first-class although, in truth, some were modest affairs. The three-match Test series was won 2-1 by England. Briggs played six games against the tourists, two of them for Lancashire, but in only one Test. This was at Manchester where, of course, the side was selected by the county. In that match, which Australia won, he took three wickets and scored 16 runs, which by his own high standards was a modest performance. It was clear that at 33, he could no longer lay claim to an automatic Test place. However, he played two matches a week, more or less every week, so that he appeared in 30 first-class matches in the season, more than in any other season in his career. He bowled 1,781 five-ball overs, easily his biggest seasonal total. Only the Middlesex and England right-arm medium pace bowler Jack Hearne bowled more overs, but he was rewarded with almost a hundred more wickets Bowling Lancashire to their first official title 71