Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

29 more outstanding home seasons when the statistics became even more impressive and, by modern-day standards, verged on the incredible. From then on his selection for England was as automatic as that for Surrey. 1894 Surrey, still without Lohmann, but with Richardson and Lockwood very much to the fore, were determined to regain what players and members saw as their rightful place at the head of the County Championship and did so in some style. Without the distraction of an Australian tour, they won thirteen and tied one of their sixteen matches. Seventeen wickets in two early season first-class but non-Championship matches against Warwickshire and Derbyshire were a suitable warm-up for a nineteenth- century Whitsuntide equivalent of the Real Madrid-Barcelona el clásico. At Trent Bridge, albeit without Gunn and Shrewsbury, Nottinghamshire once again succumbed to Richardson (36.2-22-32-6 and 30.2-3-67-7 – eleven bowled, one lbw) and had lost by an innings by the end of the second day: Richardson’s bowling was quite the feature of the match. Altogether he took thirteen wickets at a cost of just over seven and a half runs apiece. 59 59 Cricket 17 May 1894 1892-94 Surrey...and England Surrey in 1894 – containing four Thames Ditton players – Maurice Read, Tom Richardson, George Ayres (first three on back row) and Billy Brockwell (second right on middle row). Richardson’s association with the Club began in 1896, through his friendship with George Ayres and his move to Thames Ditton on his marriage. [Thames Ditton Cricket Club 1883 - 2008]