Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

12 Family Background teams as old again as himself and with years more experience. He was as strong as I was weak. Infantile paralysis was my undoing, at two years of age, yet at ten I was playing cricket on the Green and my subsequent career with the ‘Old Buffers’, a good old all-Mitcham team of repute, showed that I did not allow my disability to handicap me unduly. Like Tom I was a bowler, but, unlike him, a slow one. It was my pride that I could make the ball turn either way.” Bill Richardson had a proper pride in his famous brother: “Tom took his first wicket in first-class cricket at the Oval with the first ball he sent down,” he said. 7 “The first victim was Burns, the Essex professional. Some years after my brother Charles, bowling his first ball as professional for Upminster Friars took the wicket of Burns’s brother. Strange things happen in cricket and I think that is one of the strangest.” 8 The youngest brother, Charles (actually Launcelot Charles, but none of the five brothers was known by their first given name), 9 referred to here, played for Mitcham Wanderers in at least one match against F.G. Owers, part of the family who accompanied Tom to Aix-les-Bains on what turned out to be his final holiday. The third brother, Francis (Frank) followed a military career as a groom. He joined the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment in 1888; army records indicate that he had previously been a groom with the 5 th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. He served in India, South Africa in the Boer War, Canada and South Africa again where the family settled. He is the great-grandfather of former South African wicket-keeper, now General Manager - Cricket of the ICC, David Richardson. There are several other first-class cricketers among the descendants of Tom’s siblings, as well as an international hockey player 10 and an Olympic yachtsman. 11 The whole family has an impressive sporting pedigree with several examples of provincial representation, and current members recall the previous generation playing against Bob Willis in club cricket in Pretoria. Tom predeceased all of them. Bill and Charles were the chief mourners at his funeral: Harry does not get a mention. 12 Frank was in South Africa. 7 The recollection is correct, but Essex was not first-class at the time. 8 Mitcham Advertiser 20 August 1942. 9 Charles Henry was known as Harry, William as Bill, Francis as Frank, Thomas as Tom and finally, Launcelot Charles as Charles. 10 Margaret Cowen (née Richardson) , Frank’s granddaughter represented South Africa in the 1960s. 11 Ian Ainslie who represented South Africa in the Olympic Games in 1992, 1996 and 2000. 12 Mitcham Advertiser 19 July 1912