Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

125 he bowled that ball (happily, it was not a ball he could put in very often.), and I always took consolation from the thought that that particular ball would beat any batsman on earth.’ The Middlesex batsman, V.E.Walker also remembered that Emmett at times bowled ‘a most diabolical kind of ball – perhaps more difficult than any bowler before or since.’ He said it would now and then pitch ‘about your legs, whip back very quickly indeed, and either hit or just miss the off stump.’ 102 One man who got to know Emmett’s bowling well was George Pinder, the Yorkshire wicketkeeper, who played with him until 1880. He told ‘Old Ebor’ that ‘it was no joke keeping wicket to...Tom. Emmett, who used to sling in the ball at times in a way that made the stumper keep his eyes open and his wits about him. He used to ‘corkscrew’ his deliveries in a very perplexing way. There was a certain ball which appeared going to leg, but which would whip in on middle and off stumps. As soon as I saw that ball I gave the batsman up. 103 In addition to bowling wide, Emmett also sought to vary the length of his balls by employing the whole width of the bowling crease or bowling from behind it. It all added up to a powerful and unorthodox mixture, but one which was considered quite economical by some; George Atkinson, for example, remarked that he could ‘swing away for weeks.’ 104 Tom Emmett’s record as a bowler is remarkable, but he also handled the bat with an idiosyncratic style, right from the moment he left the pavilion, striding into battle often with his bat inverted like a walking stick. He did not have the same level of success as a batsman in what remained a bowler’s game for much of the century, but as we have seen, his batting improved during his career. The Leeds Mercury noted that ‘he was not without ability as a batsman; and during the time he led his colleagues he was often responsible for getting the team out of a tight corner.’ The maverick nature of his approach to bowling was replicated with his batting. To Lyttleton, ‘it was impossible to tell what he would do with any one ball. You might bowl two consecutive full pitches, and he would play them steadily when another batsman would hit them to the ropes. On the other hand, you might pitch him a fair length ball, and you would see old Tom Emmett hit it hard over the bowler’s head. He seemed to have no principle of batting.’ He certainly liked to have a go if the circumstances were right. At Hull in 1877, for the North v South, for example, he ‘played in splendid style, on the principle of a “short life and a merry one”, and he made some of the best lifts of the day, one ball being beautifully skied over the pavilion, apparently with the greatest of ease.’ At the beginning of his innings Emmett could often be rather excited, and started off for a run as soon as he touched the ball without looking where it had gone. Yet he certainly thought about his approach and was not always reckless. In June 1878, for example, he hit the ball all round the ground during an innings of 79 against Nottinghamshire. He played Shaw and Morley off his legs, and drove and cut to the boundary. He also hit straight for four on a number of occasions, before being caught at deep mid-off in an innings of controlled aggression. One observer commented Personality, performance and popularity