Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

102 the result of lucky snicks through the slips or to leg about which the batsman knew nothing, than was the case with any other bowler of his generation … His pronounced off-break coupled with his great pace made him particularly difficult to score from in front of the wicket. There were times when it seemed scarcely necessary for him to have any fieldsman, beyond the wicket-keeper. He had such splendid legs and thighs and such beautifully developed muscles in the back. To quote another apt description of C.B.Fry’s: “Most of his action comes from the small of his back which must have double action, Damascus steel fittings.” He was essentially a natural bowler. He took a very long run – fully twenty yards… Every foot of it had purpose... It was a straight forward run made up of long strides, rhythmical, elastic, and the whole impetus of it was put into the high, swinging rotary action. His delivery had no suspicion of laboriousness. His body swung and the way his hand cut across the ball gave him what is called ‘action-break’ which is totally different from finger-spin break, so different that Richardson could command his three to six inches of sudden off-break on a pitch so true that the finger-spinners were coming along quite plain. There were those who called him purely a mechanical bowler. Perhaps he was. But a man who could average his 250 wickets a season in first- class matches for four years had no need to strive after generalship. He had something better than that. He had the devastating power of artillery. 240 Unlike his Australian contemporary Ernest Jones, Richardson was not a ‘nasty’ bowler. In his biography of W.G.Grace, Simon Rae relates an instance of the man’s gentle nature. It was the return match against Gloucestershire in 1895: Surrey had their revenge for the defeat at The Oval when they came to Clifton towards the end of August. Richardson, who was on fine form, bowled Grace for a duck and the whole team was out for 53. At a reception for the players of both teams that evening the host took the Surrey fast bowler aside and congratulated him on his performance, but insisted that ‘The Old Man must not get a pair’. The following morning Richardson, ‘the most good-natured of men’, obliged with an easy one, but Grace was almost immediately dismissed by Hayward for 3. 241 Known as ‘Long Tom’ because of his height or ‘Honest Tom’ because of his ‘honest toil’, the ‘bouncer’ – in its infancy at the time and not to become a regular part of the game before the ‘bodyline’ series – was not part of his fast bowling armoury and when the unreliable nature of the pitch or the batsmen’s own incompetence caused him to be hit, Richardson was generally the first to show concern. 240 Sporting Life 5 July 1912 241 W G Grace: A Life p 415: ‘the most good-natured of men’ is from the Memorial Biography. Technique and Personality