Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

132 Statistics Between 1866 and 1888, Tom Emmett played 299 first-class matches for Yorkshire. Ignoring the two games he played after he had effectively retired in 1887, this was 95% of those the county played in this period. For the other 5%, he was either playing elsewhere or (rarely) injured. His record of 1,216 wickets at 12.71 places him 11 th in the list of all-time wicket takers for the county, albeit he started at a time when there were far fewer games than was the case only a few years after his retirement. Of those Yorkshire bowlers who took more than 500 wickets, only Ted Peate – with whom he often appeared - has a (marginally) better average for the county. Emmett took 10 wickets in a match for Yorkshire on 19 occasions, also the 11 th highest number in the club’s history, with a best match bowling figures of 16-38 against Cambridgeshire in 1869. Only W.E.Bowes and H.Verity have ever had a better match return for Yorkshire. He took eight or more wickets in an innings on eight occasions, with 9-23 against Cambridgeshire in 1869 his best performance. Remarkably, Emmett’s best first-class season was at the age of 44 in 1886, when he took 124 wickets in total, and bowled the largest number of balls in any season of his career. He was the first Yorkshire bowler to take 1,000 first-class wickets. His overall record for Yorkshire was: M I NO R HS Av 100 R W Av BB C 299 484 65 6,315 104 15.07 1 15,465 1,216 12.71 9-23 179 Adding in matches for a wealth of other sides, Emmett appeared in 426 first-class matches, scoring 9,053 runs at an average of 14.84. He took 1,572 first-class wickets at an average of 13.55. In seven Test matches, including what is considered the first one ever, he made a modest 160 runs with a top score of 48, and took just 9 wickets at an average of 31.55. In addition, Emmett appeared both for and against the great touring elevens. His bowling record was as follows, the data including both first- class and non-first-class fixtures. For Against Team Period Wickets Period Wickets All-England Eleven 1867-1874 283 1863-1874 162 United All-England Eleven 1868-1869 118 1863-1867 45 Whilst taking around 400 wickets of mostly local batsmen may not have been such a great challenge, the 200 against the touring sides included some of the best players of the day. Thus, in total Emmett took around 2,000 wickets in decent quality matches over the period from 1863 to 1888.