Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

99 Chapter Eleven Technique and Personality Tom Richardson’s bowling technique was of the simplest. His 6ft 1½ in, 12st 7lb frame 232 simply accelerated to the crease, leapt in the air and bowled with a high sideways on action, his right arm sweeping across his body to finish across his left thigh and his fingers running across whatever might remain of the seam, thereby imparting what his contemporaries called ‘break’ and what we would call ‘cut’. Whatever it was called, it was prodigious and it was consistent. Nothing else, no variation of pace or angle, no Lohmann-style ‘hanging ball’, negligible inconsistency, deliberate or otherwise, in line and length. His great attribute was that he could go on and on, over after over, hour after hour, match after match and season after season, his great career reaching a plateau between 1893 and 1897. Unlike many bowlers who have revelled in damp uncovered pitches, Richardson was, because of his pace, unable to get a foothold in damp conditions and, although there are instances of success on wet pitches, it was not in his temperament to change his pace or style and consequently most of his great performances were on hard, fast pitches in what would, but for Richardson, have been unquestionably batsman-friendly conditions. No fast bowler can reasonably be expected to remain at his fastest for more than four or five years. Fred Trueman and Allan Donald were rare exceptions but for most, like Frank Tyson, it was two or three. Others like Ray Lindwall and Dennis Lillee, after injury in the case of the latter, adjusted their style to compensate for declining speed by concentrating more on variations of pace, swing and cut. Richardson was not like that. His decline was almost as rapid as his rise and with rare exceptions he was never the same bowler again after that debilitating 1897/98 tour of Australia: Richardson made a noble sight, a giant with black curly hair and a moustache; he ran to bowl in swinging strides and just before his arm wheeled over he leapt upwards: it was like a wave going to a crest then breaking. 233 or, Cardus again: This man Richardson was the greatest cricketer that ever took to fast bowling. Lockwood had nicer technical shades than Richardson – a guile which was alien to the honest heart of Richardson. But Lockwood had not a great spirit. He was a bowler at the mercy of a mood; an artist 232 Lillywhite’s 1897 p 293 233 Cardus Autobiography p 36