Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

55 worked for him shows that if a man can play, and knows how to behave himself, he will never lack warm friends when the opportunity arises. It was also during the 1878 season that one of Emmett’s better known stories allegedly took place. Batting at The Oval for an England side against Gloucestershire in August, he faced Frank Townsend, who was bowling his lobs. Emmett – who considered himself a very good player of this style - made a show of contempt for underhands, held his bat up over his shoulder and left alone one or two balls on the off. At last Townsend got a ball to break in more than usual, and it hit the off stump. Emmett, apparently mortified at his own stupidity, walked back to the pavilion in high dudgeon, but only after – according to one retelling of the story by Emmett himself – putting the bails back on and asking Townsend to let him have the ball again. As he left the field, someone asked “What is the matter, Tom?” “Don’t you ‘Tom’ me,’ was the answer. “Well, Emmett, then.” “Don’t you ‘Emmett’ me.” “Well, then, Mr. Emmett.” Don’t you ‘mister’ me.” “What must I call you, then?” “Why,” replied Tom, bursting with inward wrath, “you must call me a stupid fool.” As some compensation later, Emmett then ran through the Gloucestershire side, taking 8-51 in 44 overs, including having Townsend caught and bowled for 0. According to Townsend’s obituary, however, to the end of his life in 1920, he ‘recalled with delight how, at the Oval, he had bowled Tom Emmett with a ball at which that most genial and humorous of cricketers did not attempt to play.’ Sadly, like other Emmett stories, it is hard to tell whether it really happened. As early as 1892, the Yorkshire Evening Post suggested it was ‘more or less an apocryphal story’. Lord Harris’s side 1878/79 Emmett’s second tour of Australia came in the winter of 1878/79. On 17 October, less than a month after he had completed the home season, Emmett was one of 12 players who left Southampton under the captaincy of Lord Harris. Originally, Melbourne Cricket Club had invited the Middlesex cricketer, I.D.Walker, to take a side of amateurs to Australia as guests of the club. According to Coldham, at the last minute, Walker was unable to tour, and Harris was appointed captain after A.N.Hornby had turned down the opportunity. There was also considerable uncertainty about the make-up of the side. A number of other amateurs dropped out, and Walker advised the New South Wales Cricket Association that ‘we find it necessary to include two professionals’ - Ulyett and Emmett – in a side which was otherwise described as ‘very deficient in bowling’. Only Lucas of Surrey was considered much of a change bowler, but otherwise ‘there is little for the colonials to fear’. The financial side of arrangements was reported in the London press and a clarification was published afterwards to deny suggestions that it was ‘a money speculation’, something not deemed suitable for amateurs. The first-class passages there and back were paid by the Melbourne club, and it was reported that the amateurs were guests of the club and would not ‘participate in any way whatever in the receipts of the matches.’ In Yorkshire Captain 1878-1883