Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

15 the Education Act of 1870 which made elementary education compulsory, the school was extended periodically, but was the subject of several reports which condemned it as insanitary. It closed in 1898. On leaving school, Tom found a job as a labourer in a linoleum factory on Morden Road. It was not a job he enjoyed and he applied to join the Army and the Police Force but was rejected by both, allegedly because of a heart abnormality 18 which his later feats of stamina seemed to belie. It is at least possible that he wished to follow his brother’s example and join the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment. 19 Had he done so, the history of fast bowling might have been different. Anecdotal evidence from the family is that by the end of the century Tom had made sufficient money from professional cricket to enable him to buy a few of the cottages and rent them out. The only member of the family remaining there in 1901 was eldest brother Charles Henry (known as Harry), who is described as an insurance agent and may possibly have been acting as a letting agent for Tom. Mitcham Cricket Club is one of a number which claims to be the oldest in the world, difficult to prove as the informal playing of the game generally precedes the formal establishment of a cricket club, but Crickette on Ye Olde Meecham Green is reputed to have been shown in a print dated 1685 20 and there is substance in the boast that the Green is the ground with the longest record of continuous use. Whatever its origins, in the early nineteenth century it was clearly well established: At Mitcham a club of noblemen and gentlemen amuse themselves three or four times a week, and most of them are good hands. 21 The Richardsons were by no stretch of the imagination ‘noblemen and gentlemen’ and by the time they arrived in Mitcham the Club had become more representative of the population of the village. Over the years it has been a regular and prolific nursery for the county, producing early Surrey ‘crack’ James Southerton, Herbert Strudwick, and in more recent times, Ken Barrington. In the late nineteenth century, the Club regularly hosted practice facilities for the Australian tourists. By 2012 Mitcham Cricket Club had slipped to the sixth tier of the Surrey Championship, but it remains proud of its heritage and traditions. Scores of times I have been asked where I learnt my cricket and have been very pleased to say, “At Mitcham” and my questioner has said, “Oh, yes, the nursery of Surrey cricket”. I recall hearing people suggest that one end of the wicket was dry and the other wet, one for Tom Richardson and the other one for T.P.Harvey! I never saw such a thing and think the suggestion was just somebody’s imagination. T.P.Harvey was a slow right-arm bowler with a slight suspicion of a throw. He 18 Barker Ten Great Bowlers pp 68 & 125 ; the Richardson family has a history of congenital heart disease. 19 Recruitment records for the period are no longer extant. 20 Website of Merton Historical Society 21 Annals of Sporting June 1822 Mitcham