Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

61 For Surrey alone, Richardson had taken 238 wickets in 1,398 overs: Hayward 91 in 713.1, Lees 75 in 661.2, Brockwell 37 in 434.1. It was indicative of a workload which, coupled with what he had to get through on the coming winter’s tour of Australia, was to precipitate a decline in his effectiveness. He continued to take wickets and plenty of them, but no longer at the rate of over two hundred a year. But his season was not over. The Hastings Festival followed and the wickets continued to come, seven for 47 for the South against the North at Hastings, six for 98 and seven for 63 for the Players against the Gentlemen. It brought his tally for the season to 273 and for four seasons to 1,005 (1,073 if the 1894/95 tour of Australia is included), an achievement to which no other fast bowler has come close, though leg-break and googly bowler ‘Tich’ Freeman had 1,122 in his record-breaking season and the three subsequent ones. 139 Richardson’s standing in the cricketing firmament was at its highest and he was the benchmark against which others were measured. Pelham Warner on tour on the United States said in one of his speeches It has been said by the admirers of Mr King that on his day he is, with the exception of the famous Tom Richardson, the greatest bowler in the world; I see no reason to cavil at the verdict. 140 In the full heat of the statistical explosion of the 1890s, F.S.Ashley-Cooper in SOME STATISTICS OF THE SEASON pointed out that Tom Richardson bowled in 59 innings and only in two of the 59 did his efforts go unrewarded. 141 He took his 200 th wicket of the season on 13 August at Leyton on his way to a season’s total of 273. He had 15 wickets in a match on three occasions and took wickets in all of the thirty matches in which he bowled. Albert Craig updated his sketch of ‘Thomas Richardson’: unlike George Lohmann, this crack fast bowler is a Surreyite by birth, which is a superior characteristic to all ‘qualifying fakements’ so frequently resorted to. On 11 th of August 1870, the year remarkable for the conclusion of the Franco-German war, Tom Richardson disturbed the quiet serenity of Byfleet by the initial usage of his lungs. Since acquiring the knowledge of how to use a cricket ball, he has disturbed a great number of wickets. 142 Such was Craig’s slightly Quixotic interpretation of Richardson’s very early days. Wisden yet again highlighted the fact that Richardson was now head and shoulders above any other bowler: They, of course, possessed in Richardson, far and away the best bowler in the country, but it was a little disquieting to supporters of 139 Wisden 2012 pp 1262-3 140 Cricket 25 November 1897 141 Cricket 18 December 1897 142 Captain of the Crowd p 88 1897...Jubilee and Millennium