Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

44 Richardson and Lohmann as on the previous day could not be resisted, and no one of the last nine batsmen reached double figures … Lohmann’s re-appearance was quite successful, he obtaining in all nine wickets for 90, but Richardson had ten for 66. 91 It presaged the Lord’s Test of the following season when Lohmann and Richardson were again an effective combination. Some years later, Douglas Jardine was to write: People say they used ‘to go and see Lohmann and Richardson bowl’. Today does anyone go to see anyone bowl? 92 Only for a couple of seasons when Lohmann’s appearances were spasmodic did he and Richardson bowl in tandem, but when they did the results were, almost without exception, devastating. Richardson’s pace continued unabated: The cricket critics have very properly pointed out that Richardson’s performance at The Oval last Thursday in the Sussex match, in bowling Mr Murdoch, with a ball that sent the bail fifty yards is not even the best of the season. 93 That distinction apparently fell to Charles Kortright bowling for Essex against Leicestershire at Leyton, but the longest recorded was 62 yards by H.Rotherham when he bowled Mr D.H.Docker in the Uppingham Rovers v Gentlemen of Derbyshire match at Derby in August 1881. Anorakism had been born. 94 More significant perhaps than the distance travelled by the bail was Tom’s best bowling return of the season – nine for 49 - and a breezy 41 not out. Then, against Derbyshire, he again combined with Lohmann in another innings victory. Lohmann and Richardson bowled on a wicket which helped them with startling effect. In the whole match Lohmann had eight wickets for 59 and Richardson eleven for 60, these men bowling unchanged. 95 A week later, Rev R.S.Holmes commented: Surrey’s single innings victory over Derbyshire, although they lost the toss again, had just two prominent characteristics – an innings of 50 by Hayward, and two bowlers unchanged. Lohmann and Richardson had never combined before in this way, although both of them had a hand on the four previous occasions on which this same unusual distinction had fallen to the bowlers since 1873, Lohmann figuring three times, Richardson once. 96 The consistency of wicket-taking continued, his back-to-back returns 91 Cricket 25 July 1895 92 Letter to The Times 5 July 1947 93 Cricket 1 August 1895 94 Cricket 1 August 1895: the text reads ‘Effingham’, but the strong likelihood is that it should be ‘Uppingham’ 95 Cricket 1 August 1895 96 Cricket 8 August 1895 1895...Annus Mirabilis...Surrey