Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

77 some of its attractiveness – it may be that the regretted absence of Briggs has taken some of the ‘go’ out of the team, and it is certain that its recent performances have not been such as to command great admiration, so that a well contested match was hardly to be looked for. 185 A win against Hampshire took Surrey to the fringe of regaining the Championship title: In the first innings, every bowler who went on distinguished himself, while Richardson ended up the innings in a remarkable manner. 186 The ‘remarkable manner’ was 2.4-1-2-3 – all bowled. A heavily rain-affected draw against Warwickshire saw Richardson’s team to the title which had eluded them for the previous three seasons. Apart from the truncated season of 1914 and the shared title of 1950, it was the last occasion until the run of seven consecutive Championships in the 1950s. For Richardson, however, it had been a season of continuing decline, the weight gain first detected in Australia eighteen months before now becoming very apparent. As Cecil Headlam pointed out: When he did at last get a rest during the winter, he put on flesh alarmingly, and his great muscles turned to fat. He was summoned to explain himself before the Surrey Committee, when, aghast they beheld him, flabby, mountainous, and his pale face half gone, at the beginning of the next season. “Why, Tom, what on earth has happened to you?” “Well, gentlemen,” replied Tom apologetically, “I suppose it is because I likes my creature comforts!” 187 The anecdote is consistent with a comment by Ben Travers in 94 Declared , who, born in 1886, might just have witnessed Richardson at his best and considered him England’s greatest ever fast bowler. “However sceptical people may be about my estimate of Tom Richardson’s bowling ability,” he wrote, “one fact is universally acknowledged and unchallenged: he could and did drink a larger number of pints of beer on end than any known cricketer alive or dead.” Had Richardson been himself, there would have been a very different tale to tell, but the great fast bowler, who had put on a good deal of weight, was far less effective than in any year since he first played for Surrey, and his want of success made all the difference in the world to the eleven. It may be that a mistake was committed in not giving him more work to do in the early matches, but though as the summer advanced, he every now and then showed capital form, it cannot be said that he was ever the Richardson who had, in previous years, inspired batsmen with such a wholesome respect for his powers. In the seasons of 1893 to 1897 inclusive, the fact that they had to face 185 31 August 1899 186 Cricket 7 September 1899 187 Cecil Headlam Behind the sticks in The Cricketer 12 August 1922. Fin-de-Siècle