Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

Chapter Fourteen Seizure at the Music Hall ‘Tell the public I am all right.’ Johnny Briggs Briggs played in only 13 first-class matches for Lancashire in 1899, the year he suffered his seizure in June. He wasn’t having a particularly good season with either bat or ball, claiming just 57 wickets at 19.24 for the county and scoring 284 runs in 20 innings for an average of 16.70. He rarely proved a match-winner with the ball in a disappointing championship season for Lancashire, who finished fourth in the competition. But his best all-round performance came at an opportune time, when his selection for the Third Test against the Australians at Headingley was under the spotlight. The match in question was against Yorkshire at Sheffield, where Briggs did his Test prospects no harm at all with ten wickets and two useful innings. Nevertheless, his place in the England side was in doubt right up to the morning of the match. He had been championed by his county captain MacLaren, who knew how desperate Briggs was to complete 100 Test wickets against Australia, but the Leeds Evening Express reported that Briggs ultimately ‘took the eleventh place in the side’. In fact, the day before the Test was due to start, the proceedings at Sheffield were interrupted several times, even though the game was delicately poised, by the appearance on the field of Yorkshire captain Lord Hawke, who wished to consult with MacLaren about the composition of the Test team. In the end, Briggs replaced Yorkshire’s young Wilfred Rhodes, who was to become one of the game’s greatest all-rounders with more than 40,000 runs and in excess of 4,000 wickets in a career that spanned 37 seasons. Originally, Stanley Jackson had said he wanted to be left out, but the Yorkshireman changed his mind and indicated he wanted to play, so it was decided to omit Tom Hayward and play his Surrey colleague Bill Brockwell along with Briggs. However, Brockwell damaged a hand and his team-mate Hayward was back in the side. 78