Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

35 Chapter Four Australia 1894/95 One for 85 and one for 41 against South Australia at Adelaide and one for 92 and none for 45 against Victoria at Melbourne, following on, was no portent of what was to come. Tom had bowled a few overs en route in the traditional non-first-class match against Ceylon and played but did not bowl in a similarly unclassified match against Gawlor. The Adelaide match had been an inauspicious start for the tourists as they went down by six wickets, but the Victoria match was won by 134 runs, Briggs and Peel sharing sixteen wickets between them. Then, in a decision that looks surprisingly anachronistic at a time when key bowlers were expected to perform almost non-stop, Mr Stoddart decided to rest Richardson who will have to be nursed for the big matches. 68 Tom missed the New South Wales match and that against Twenty-two of Toowoomba, though he was given an outing against Twenty-two of New England at Armidale when he had nine for 46. But the rest seems to have worked and he came back with an impressive performance against Queensland, first-class but not yet participating in the recently established Sheffield Shield, as, spearheaded by Tom’s bowling, Stoddart’s team demolished their hosts by an innings and 274 runs. Tom had returned to something like his expected form with 18.1-5-52-8 and 8-2-11-3, ten of his victims being bowled, the other lbw. Richardson and Peel bowled unchanged although it did seem that Bobby was kept on too long. The “Surrey catapult” secured the fine average of 8 for 52 which will go a long way to pulling up his general averages which were knocked all to pieces at Adelaide and Melbourne… wonderful figures on a perfect pitch. 69 And so to what David Frith has called ‘The First Great Test Series’ – a five- match rubber for the first time for a decade, though there had been seven Anglo-Australian ‘series’ of one, two or three matches. The venues were identical, two matches at Melbourne, two at Sydney and one at Adelaide, though not in the same order, as, coincidentally was the results pattern – two wins by England, two by Australia and a final win for England to take the series 3-2. There were other matches in between, minor ones against Bendigo, Ballarat and Stawell and a first-class fixture against a combined New South Wales- Queensland XI at Brisbane. Richardson played a full part in the latter but 68 Cricket 31 January 1895 69 Cricket 31 January 1895