Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

89 teetotaller and at close of play one day picked up, by mistake, and drank a glass of ginger beer prepared for Tom Richardson. It had been laced with gin. Strudwick said it was the best ginger beer he had ever tasted. 210 1903 This was Tom’s last full season. He had 119 wickets, the tenth time in eleven full seasons that he had passed the hundred mark and on the other in 1899, had failed to do so only by two. His best was seven for 57 at Bramall Lane after five for 93 in the first innings. Never since the handful of matches played in his début season of 1892 had he failed to take seven wickets in an innings on more than one occasion Cricket variously reported: Only Findlay meeting with any pronounced success against Lockwood and Richardson … Richardson being in great form … Lockwood and Richardson soon became masters of the situation … Richardson’s bowling was quite a feature of the match. 211 He played in the Gentlemen v Players match at The Oval, for the first time since 1897, but with only modest success – two wickets in each innings, an impressive 30.1-3-96-5 against Lancashire followed by 24.1-10-41-6 and 17.2-2-84-5 against Somerset: In both Somerset innings Richardson bowled admirably… On Tuesday afternoon, Richardson was even more successful with the ball than Braund had been on the previous day… 212 He played against the touring Gentlemen of Philadelphia, his comments earning him a rare appearance in the New York Times . Swing bowling, spearheaded by George Hirst, was beginning to be a part of the cricket scene, and some saw the origins of this new ‘swerve’ bowling, as it was then called, in baseball pitching, adapted to the sister game by J.B.King. W.G.Grace apparently thought not too much of it, but Richardson was alive to its possibilities: The disregard of Dr Grace for this new style of bowling has not been shared by all his countrymen. Several bowlers since 1897 have endeavoured to imitate the American bowler who wrought such havoc at Brighton. Tom Richardson of Surrey is one of those who appreciates the importance of that ‘curve in the air’ and it is significant that many bowlers new to county cricket, men who have only gained their places on county teams within the last year or two, are credited with possessing the secret. 213 As the season drew to a close, the whirligig of negotiations started up 210 McKinstry Jack Hobbs p 108 211 Cricket 2 July 1903 212 Cricket 23 July 1903 213 New York Times 16 August 1903. The Twilight’s Last Gleaming