Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

51 did the hat-trick by bowling Pougher, Geeson and Coe with consecutive balls. In his ‘horse-kicking’ mode he had shared a tenth-wicket partnership of 56 with his captain, Kingsmill Key. It was a measure of Surrey’s complete dominance that this was one more than the total of Leicestershire’s first innings. The pattern of the previous season continued. Of Richardson’s 23 wickets in the first two Championship matches of the year, eighteen were bowled. It was the prelude to two outstanding performances in the Test matches of that season and concluding with the players’ strike that saw the end of George Lohmann’s career and a hiatus in Richardson’s. Bowling in tandem, Lohmann and Richardson demolished Australia in the First Test at Lord’s – 53 all out in 22.3 overs. The tourists did rather better in the second innings, but not well enough to prevent an England victory and not before Richardson had produced another of his marathon spells, 47-15-134-5, J.T.Hearne taking the other five. At the beginning of the innings, Richardson seemed to offer no difficulty to Donnan and Darling; his pitch was not at all accurate. Lohmann, on the other hand, was difficult from the first. Trott … was completely beaten by Richardson who by this time got a better pitch. [Gregory] played with confidence and he and Darling made several fine hits off Richardson, with whom W.G. had a little talk. This was the turning point of the game and thereafter Lohmann and Richardson carried everything before them. Gregory was beaten by Richardson by an extremely fast ball, which seemed, judging by his look when he found that he was bowled, to be altogether a surprise to him. With the next ball, Graham was bowled – another great surprise. Then, after Darling made a lovely cut for four off Richardson, the Surrey bowler sent him a very fast ball which just took off a bail. … There was no longer any room for doubting that the rot was complete. None of the rest of the team even looked like making a stand, and the innings was over in an hour and a quarter. Everybody was asking everybody else for an explanation of the collapse, but none was forthcoming. The bowlers bowled splendidly, it is true, but the ball did not kick or do anything very dreadful; probably the bowling of Richardson was found to be more difficult than had been seen on Australian wickets. 115 Between the Test matches, indeed between the Hampshire match at Southampton in which he took ten wickets and the Gentlemen v Players match at The Oval in which he took a further ten, Surrey having no fixture, Richardson went off to play some club cricket with Andover and completely ruined the match as a contest. Quite how he came to be playing for Andover is a matter of speculation; perhaps it was his friendship with 115 Cricket 25 June 1896 1896...Annus Mirabilis...England