Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

101 Technique and Personality condition of the ball. A further disadvantage compared with his modern counterparts is that the LBW law was more favourable to batsmen before it was changed in 1935. In Richardson’s day the ball had to pitch between wicket and wicket for the bowler to have a chance. So in theory the batsman could safely pad up to anything pitched outside the off stump. In practice, given the flimsy nature of protective equipment, it might have been masochistic to do so against some one of Richardson’s pace, but it is at least arguable that, had the current lbw law been in operation then he might have had even more than his 2,104 first-class wickets. If anything he was perhaps too consistent. He hardly ever bowled a loose ball, but Ranjitsinhji expressed a preference for Richardson’s bowling over Lockwood’s on the grounds that it was more predictable and less variable: On a good wicket Tom’s speed and breakback needed watching, but I knew what was coming. With Lockwood I had to keep awake for his slower ball. 237 He was able to speak with authority, having in his salad days at Cambridge University hired both Richardson and Lockwood to bowl to him to help him acclimatise to English bowlers and conditions. 238 George Lohmann, Richardson’s opening partner in the demolition of Australia at Lord’s in 1896, the only occasion on which they bowled together for England, had no doubt about his colleague’s place in the world bowling league. He had seen them all, English, Australian and South African and, even with an allowance for Surrey bias, unhesitatingly places his friend right at the top: In my opinion he is the best bowler in the world on a good wicket… If he could only get a footing on sticky wickets his average would be about half what it is now; as it is, about a third of the runs that are made off him are due more to accident than intention. He is one of the best triers I have ever seen and one of the best tempered. 239 With the advantage of hindsight, Long Leg in his Sporting Life obituary of Richardson sixteen years later, saw no reason to modify that judgment: Many fine judges of cricket – among them the Hon R.H.Lyttelton – did not hesitate to describe Richardson as the finest fast bowler the world had ever seen. He had not S.M.J.Woods’s power of pace changes, or quite so much speed as Ernest Jones, nor did he come so quickly off the pitch as Lockwood or Mold: but he had far more accuracy than the Australian, as much pure speed as any of the others, and he was easily their master in point of consistency. He was totally unlike the majority of fast bowlers who have succeeded him; bowlers who bang the ball down short on the off side and trust to catches in the slips and at the wicket to bring them success. No; Richardson aimed at the stumps and owed comparatively little to his fieldsmen… I think it is right to say that a large proportion of the runs scored from him were 237 Wisden 1963 p 101 238 Dobbs Edwardians at Play p 132 239 Bettesworth Chats on the Cricket Field; George Lohmann 30 July 1896.