Lives in Cricket No 2 - Johnny Briggs

ball, taking nine wickets against Derbyshire at the North Road Ground, Glossop and 7 for 53 and 3 for 22 against Nottingham- shire at Old Trafford. In what proved to be his 391st and last first-class appearance for Lancashire before his death, Briggs contributed with both bat and ball in the home match against Leicestershire, hitting 36 not out in his only innings and taking 2 for 41 in the first innings and 6 for 49 on the final afternoon – his last afternoon of cricket at Old Trafford – on 1 September, 1900. Lancashire were also indebted to their openers, MacLaren, who scored a quickfire second innings 145 and Leeds-born Albert Ward who scored a painstaking 120, batting four hours and 20 minutes in the first innings. Fittingly, though, it was Briggs who applied the finishing touches with his six wickets in 23 deadly accurate overs as Leicestershire collapsed to 120 all out, giving Lancashire a 260-run victory, even though play had been delayed until 2.45 on the final afternoon. Thus Briggs had ended the last of his 22 seasons for Lancashire, the side he had loved and served with such devotion, with 761 first-class runs at 20.56 and 120 wickets at 17.45. Once again, Briggs had finished as the side’s leading bowler, eleven ahead of Cuttell. After the usual festival matches at Scarborough and Hastings had been played, MCC organised a benefit match on 14, 15 and 16 September for Philip Need, one of the club’s long serving pavilion attendants, between the North of England and the South of England. The match, played at Lord’s twelve days after Lancashire had completed their win over Leicestershire, attracted many of the leading players of the time, including W.G.Grace, Stoddart, Plum Warner, Hayward, Gilbert Jessop, Albert Trott, Lord Hawke, Hirst and Rhodes. Briggs also played. It was to be the last match of his career. But he bowed out with 6 for 135 in the first innings and 1 for 25 in the second. Briggs’ fifth wicket in that first innings – Jephson for one – chalked up what was to prove the last milestone in a career full of milestones, the two-hundredth occasion on which he had taken five in an innings in a first-class match. He became the second cricketer, behind the great man himself, W.G.Grace, to achieve that feat. In the North’s second innings, Jephson repaid the compliment, bowling Briggs for 18, the last runs he ever made in first-class cricket. Few who had either played with or watched Briggs in action that season would have expected it to be his last, although Dr Scowcroft said that throughout the summer, as well as he played, Seizure at the Music Hall 85