Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

100 with an artist’s capriciousness. Richardson bowled from a natural impulse to bowl, and whether he bowled well or ill that impulse was always strong. His action moved one like music because it was so rhythmical. He ran to the wicket a long distance, and at the bowling crease his terminating leap made you catch breath. His break-back most cricketers of his day counted among the seven wonders of the game. He could pitch a ball outside the wicket on the hardest turf and hit the leg stump. The break was, of course, an action break; at the moment of release his fingers swept across the ball and the body was flung towards the left. And his length was as true as Attewell’s own. Cardus then went on to say, His bowling was wonderful because into it went the very life-force of the man – the triumphant energy that made him in his hey-day seem one of Nature’s announcements of the joy of life. It was sad to see Richardson grow old, to see the fires in him burn low. 234 Such is the poetic version of Richardson’s action. Bettesworth also appreciated the aesthetics of the action: It is a splendid sight to see Richardson bowling, when in form. Every action of his, the run, the swing of the arm, denoted power, and one derived the same satisfaction watching him, as one derives from watching an express engine in full career, with the vast difference that the bowler is not a machine. 235 Others are more mundane and technically analytical. Given Cardus’s admiration of Richardson, it is perhaps scarcely surprising that arguably the game’s greatest author should choose arguably the game’s greatest fast bowler as one of his six Cricketers of the Wisden Century in 1963. Although not untypically cavalier in his approach to facts – some of the statistics given lack a little in accuracy and Cardus mentions five-ball overs in Australia in 1897/98 when in fact there were six – he remains confident of his judgment of Richardson’s place in the fast-bowling firmament: I choose Richardson as one of my Six, not on the supposition that he was the greatest fast bowler of the century, though certainly he was in the running. I take him as the fully realised personification of the fast bowler as every schoolboy dreams and hopes he might one day be himself. 236 Compared with present-day bowlers, Richardson had the advantage of bowling on uncovered pitches, but the disadvantage of bowling most of his overs on Sam Apted’s immaculate surfaces and of pre-dating the new ball regulations, so he was obliged to bowl whole innings with the same ball, almost seamless when he started and entirely so by the time he had finished, having on numerous occasions bowled through a complete innings. His flowing action, vigorous body movement and final sweep of the arm ensured a sharp break-back achieved independently of the 234 A Cricketer’s Book pp 49-50 235 Chats on the Cricket Field pp 357-358 236 Wisden 1963 p 99 Technique and Personality