Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

Sussex opposite number, K.S.Ranjitsinhji, twice on his way to 87, as ‘Haughty Archibald’. The City News said of MacLaren: ‘A petulant obstinacy which he seems to mistake for firmness occasionally distorts his judgement.’ The match ended in a draw but it did provide Briggs with a Lancashire county record – almost certainly unwanted – that of the most balls bowled in a match with his 126 five-ball overs adding up to 630 deliveries. Three years later, Briggs came pretty close to beating his own record when he sent down 606 deliveries in the match against Kent at Manchester. This time he was marginally more successful, taking six wickets from 101 six-ball overs. Once again Briggs’ efforts failed to produce a result, the game ending in a draw. Next stop for Briggs was Stoddart’s 1897/88 trip to Australia. It was to be his last tour – and his inclusion probably owed a little to the exclusion of Peel, who upset his captain Lord Hawke at Yorkshire by his intemperate behaviour, coming on to the field in a drunken state after what was presumably a liquid lunch on the third day of the home match against Middlesex at Sheffield. But Briggs was, in fact, the leading bowler playing with the leading county, so perhaps Peel’s aberration made little difference. Peel was to play little first-class cricket in the wake of the Sheffield incident. Briggs himself was chosen purely for his bowling and not as an all-rounder – there were three all-rounders in the side all of whom had completed the double in the domestic season just ended – and the Lancashire man rarely batted above eight and sometimes as low as ten. The outstanding success of Stoddart’s tour of 1894/95 had encouraged the Melbourne Cricket Club to promote this second tour, which left Tilbury on 17 October, 1897. Stoddart plainly liked touring: he was member of Lord Hawke’s side to the West Indies in 1896/97, and attracted as much attention there as he had in Australia three years earlier. Incidentally, the West Indies tour motto was TWBF, ‘There Will Be Fun’, although, by now, some critics were beginning to question Stoddart’s amateur status. The side played 22 matches in all, so this was perhaps the least arduous of all Briggs’ six Australian tours. Twelve were of first-class status, of which five were Test matches, and there were ten matches against odds, mostly in various towns and cities away from the colonial capitals. After the tourists had won the First Test match, Australia won the remaining four, two of them by an innings. Wisden said of the tour: ‘There has not for a very long time Bowling Lancashire to their first official title 74