Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

65 It was a good win, but a false dawn. ‘Felix’ in The Australasian was among the first to notice the beginnings of decline: I fancy Richardson is putting on flesh a bit on this trip, in spite of his passion for long walks, and is not quite as fit as on his first visit. I never saw him bowl so erratically as in the second innings at Sydney – wides, no balls, head balls, and then a succession of maiden overs that kept the batsmen hard on the defensive all the while. Charlie McLeod got two of the head balls, one the now historic no-ball 146 that pitched on top of his wicket, while the other would have pitched on his ear had he not ducked. Jack Lyons got one on the chest – that needed a plaster later on – and had he stepped away from it, it would have gone very close to the wicket, and the bowler, I fancy, appealed for l.b.w. One of his wides was a most awful wide – quite ten feet off the wicket. 147 Between the First and Second Tests, in the few days spanning Christmas and New Year, there was the opportunity for relaxation in and around the gold rush town of Bendigo, though one incident related by John Lazenby, grandson of one of Richardson’s team-mates, Jack Mason, in a book based on his grandfather’s diaries, was anything but relaxing. He describes the following encounter with one of the Antipodes’ less attractive denizens when hunting in the Gippsland bush: when a large black snake suddenly reared its head from the very place in which he was about to plant his size 11 boot. The serpent was all of 5 feet 6 inches long, big enough to have swallowed little Johnny Briggs whole, and to turn Richardson’s blood to ice on the spot, but before it could lock its eyes on to his, the Surrey crack had taken aim and, with deadly precision, killed the reptile stone dead with a single shot. The skin would return to England with him as a trophy to show his county teammates and a reminder of his brush with death. Those who had been with him in the bush that day remembered how the barrel of the gun rocked in the giant’s hand before the bullet found its mark. 148 In the New Year Test at Melbourne, Australia came back with 520 and a victory by an innings and 55 runs. On the first day The two bowlers, Richardson and Hearne, on whom the success of England was supposed chiefly to depend, did not take a wicket between them and on the second Richardson, Hearne and Hirst had about a hundred runs hit off them for only a wicket each, which was indeed a sad experience. 149 In his diary of the tour, Richardson describes the pitch as ‘very crumbly’, but acknowledges the ‘very fine performance’ of the Australians. 150 146 McLeod was run out by Storer when he left his crease after being bowled by a no-ball. His deafness prevented him from hearing the umpire’s call. 147 Reproduced in Cricket 24 February 1898 148 Test of Time pp 149-150 149 Cricket 24 February 1898 150 5 January 1898 Australia 1897/98