Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

21 A man in demand (1867-1871) summer of 1866. At Redcar, he took 17 wickets in an innings (16 of them bowled) against the Twenty-Two. A powerful man – 5 foot 10 inches and 14 stones – Freeman was described by W.G.Grace as the ‘finest fast bowler I ever played against; not perhaps the fastest, but his bowling came quickly off the pitch, and the spin he got on it troubled me more than any bowler I can remember.’ Freeman appeared again for Yorkshire in 1866, opening the batting with Cuttell against Cambridgeshire at Bradford, but was not selected for the games with Nottinghamshire, including the contest at Trent Bridge where Emmett made his debut. The following season, they appeared together for Yorkshire against Surrey at The Oval, but Emmett’s bowling was not needed, so that it was not until the return match that they bowled together in an innings, albeit with Emmett as first change. In between county games, they also appeared against each other in games between Freeman’s United All-England Eleven side and the district teams for whom Emmett played as a ‘given man’. George Freeman, with whom Emmett established a prolific, if short-lived, bowling partnership in the 1860s.