Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

64 Chapter Eight Australia 1897/98 In May 1897 it was announced that A.E.Stoddart would again lead a team to Australia as guests of the Melbourne Cricket Club and the Sydney ground trustees. Richardson was an automatic choice for the tour, but he made less of an impression than he had three years earlier. The tour was far less successful both for the team and for Richardson than the previous one in 1894/95. Still under 28, the age at which conventionally fast bowlers reach their peak, there was no way he could continue indefinitely to bowl at his pace and for the long periods to which he had been accustomed. The heat and the hard Australian pitches took their toll. In first-class matches he took 54 wickets against 68, in the Tests 22 against 32 both at a much higher average. England lost the series 4-1; compared with a 3-2 victory three years earlier. The difference was not unrelated to the difference in Richardson’s form. I never imagined that I would celebrate winning the Ashes in Australia with half-an-hour’s sleep in the back of the SCG pavilion. But then, I have bowled 213 overs in this series, which is a figure I have never even approached before. That was Jimmy Anderson at the conclusion of the 2010/11 Test series. 145 For a modern cricketer that is on the high side. Richardson bowled 255 overs in the Tests; three years earlier it was 291. On each occasion he bowled over 500 in all first-class matches as well as a few in the less serious up-country matches and those against odds. The time span was slightly longer, but modern cricketers have the advantage of expert medical attention and teams of fitness advisers and physiotherapists, which were not available in the late nineteenth century. The series began well enough. Stoddart was mourning the loss of his mother and MacLaren took over the captaincy. Ranjitsinhji scored a century on his first Test appearance in Australia, having already done so on his first appearance in England and MacLaren also registered a hundred on his first Test as captain. England ran up 551 and Australia followed on more than three hundred behind. Their second innings was better, thanks in part to some untypically erratic bowling by Richardson, occasioned possibly by increasing weight, possibly by incipient rheumatism or maybe a combination of both, as well as impending burnout, the effect on his body caused by the equivalent of just over 7,500 five-ball overs of fast bowling in the past five years. However, England’s first innings total had been sufficient. Time was not an issue – these were timeless Tests – and they knocked off the handful of runs required to win by nine wickets. 145 Sunday Telegraph 9 January 2011