Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

24 A man in demand (1867-1871) Following such easy contests, the county game with Nottinghamshire at Dewsbury might have been expected to test Emmett more. After the Yorkshire side arrived late because of delayed trains, Richard Daft with 51 and Summers with 42 put up some resistance, but Freeman (6-64) and Emmett (4-63 in 42 overs with 17 maidens) dismissed them for 162, the latter bowling fast downhill. Yorkshire batted badly to make 85, but Emmett then excelled himself to return bowling figures of 40.1-26-34-9, easily his best figures to date. Despite this, Yorkshire capitulated in their second innings, making just 76 and losing by 108 runs. After this match, Emmett must again have travelled overnight because the following day he was in the United All-England Eleven that took on Clifton in Bristol. Luckily his side batted first and scored 266, with Emmett not being needed until the end of the innings when he was dismissed by W.G.Grace. He and Tarrant then bowled out Clifton for 149 and 119, Emmett taking 16 wickets in all, including Grace in both innings. It was also reported that Emmett’s catch to dismiss E.M.Grace in the second innings was ‘one of the finest ever seen’. After the match, a single-wicket contest involving both Graces and Emmett was played to fill time. The constant travelling required of Emmett and his contemporaries to get between venues was marked by discomfort, a lack of sleep and sheer tedium. As Thomson put it, for touring cricketers like Emmett: Their journeys were arduous, trains were slow...Sometimes their journeys began in long-distance trains and the victims finished their ordeal, aching with cramp and sheer fatigue, in wagonettes or, in times of emergency, even farm carts. In May or September journeys that went on through the night and into the sharp early morning could leave the wanderers hungry and bitterly cold. 16 But if the travel was tiring, it could also be dangerous. At the start of August 1868, Emmett and Freeman were again on opposite sides, this time at Somercotes in Derbyshire. The match was less remarkable than the journey from the ground at the end of the first day when there was an accident involving Luke Greenwood, Freeman and Emmett as they were travelling in an omnibus. The vehicle came apart and overturned, with the result that Greenwood sustained such serious injuries that initially he was not expected to live. Freeman and Emmett were badly cut and bruised, along with a police sergeant and several other passengers. Readers of these details in the Huddersfield Chronicle might reasonably have feared for the life of one of the county’s top cricketers, but thankfully a later addition to the story stated that reports had been ‘slightly exaggerated’ and Greenwood, although sustaining internal injuries, was improving. Nevertheless, Emmett and Greenwood were absent from the second Somercotes innings because of the injuries sustained. Having escaped from the accident, however, Emmett was greeted with a telegram which notified him of the sudden terrible death of one of his young children. He clearly suffered injuries but a week later he seems to have recovered, and the accident and tragedy did not prevent him