Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

115 person who could converse with the stranger except by signs, and that the huge pills, looking like chocolate, the Celestial swallowed were of the strongest opium. Apart from a lot of what some of the spectators called ‘clowning’, catching balls in his wide sleeves, and so on, he showed brilliant form. After the second day of the match, in which the ‘foreigner’ made nearly a century, it came out at supper that the ‘Chinaman’ was one of the most distinguished amateur players Yorkshire ever possessed. Given his reputation for humour, some were unsure when Emmett was being serious. The Yorkshire player, Alfred Smith told the story of a visit to the Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol during the game with Gloucestershire in 1873 (when Emmett scored his only first-class century). Walking over the bridge with Greenwood and Smith, Emmett suddenly ran back shouting ‘Alf., Andrew, for God’s sake come off, the bridge is going down; if I had stopped on it would have been down long since.’ Smith said they had not been sure if this was an Emmett ‘spoof’ or whether he had really been frightened. Other stories suggested he could be a nervous man, including the recollection of when Emmett, Hall, Pinder, Hill, Ullathorne and Smith took a boat on the River Thames to Hammersmith. Ullathorne rocked the boat. Apparently frightened, Emmett urged him to stop, adding when they reached land, ‘You fellows can go by yourselves the next time you go sailing to America.’ 78 Yet Tom Emmett did more than execute practical jokes. He had a sharp mind and could offer a quick response on almost any cricketing subject, and many more too, even though they sound tame to modern and more cynical taste. One obituarist suggested ‘not the least amusing [of his clever comments] was that when W.G.Grace had knocked up 300 against the Yorkshiremen, he remarked about having ‘Grace before meat, Grace after meat, and Grace all day’. Another famous story was that ‘Old Tom Emmett used to have a weakness when young players were arguing about cricket rules, in asking how many ways a batsman could be out. When they had exhausted all the ways the rules provide, he would say ‘Nay lad, there’s another road to get aht yet.’ Asked what that was, Tom would reply with a chuckle, ‘Wrongly given aht bi t’ umpire.’ And a further one which was widely told was when a number of catches were dropped off his bowling in a local match. Eventually, he lost his temper, threw the ball down and exclaimed ‘I’m not going to bowl any more. There’s an epidemic on this ground, but, thank God, it ain’t catchin’ !’ 79 A strong aspect of Emmett’s personality was his loud voice, rich accent and lively vocabulary. As one interviewer put it, ‘Listen to him...for a moment and you will not need to be told that he is a Yorkshireman born and bred. There is no mistaking the rich roll, if not very musical dialect, of the sport-loving shire.’ At Northampton in 1868, Carpenter and Emmett batted well together for the United Eleven, ‘Emmett’s voice being heard over the whole field crying out when there was the slightest chance of a run, “Come on, Bob”.’ Cricket reported his rich Yorkshire parlance on several occasions; explaining that he pronounced upper cut as ‘th’ opper Personality, performance and popularity