Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

71 The wicket had no grass on it and the local side was weak, losing 19 wickets by the close of play. The weather was perfect until the fog arrived but there was little local interest in the game, which ended early so the team could catch their ship for Australia. The match was notable only for George Ulyett making 167 not out, and Shaw remembered a ‘more forbidding place I never bowled in’. He described it as more like a stone yard quarried out of the brown and barren hills. 50 The touring side embarked for Sydney on 22 October, arriving on 18 November on the steamship SS Australia , after stopping off in Auckland. The boat arrived early, having made a record-breaking crossing, and there were only a few cricketers to greet them, but they were taken off to their hotel in a four-in-hand drag and toasted with champagne. They were reported to be in good health and attended a local cricket match and enjoyed some practice, where Emmett ‘wielded the willow with all the freedom and effect of olden time.’ The side’s first game took place a week later against a Twenty-Two of the northern districts of New South Wales, where Emmett took 5-2 in 17 overs in a gentle warm-up match. He did little in the following fixtures, including against New South Wales in Sydney (where a crowd of 20,000 watched on the second day), and then travelled on the mail train to Cootamundra and back, arriving late at night prior to the first-class game with Victoria. Here, although he did not make a major impact, Emmett was reported to be ‘as good as ever’. At lunch on the first day, large amounts of champagne were consumed, and Alfred Shaw called for all ‘unpleasant disputes of the past’ to be forgotten, a reference presumably to the incidents on Harris’s tour of 1878-79. On the field, the visitors were forced to follow on, 105 runs behind, and then only made 198, Shrewsbury and Barlow leading the way. This still only left Victoria with under 100 to win, but the game ended in much excitement, Shaw’s side winning by 18 runs. Only Boyle and Palmer made a stand, and when the latter fell ‘into the Emmett trap’, the end came quickly. Again, large crowds saw the match – 15,000 on the second day - with many hundreds congregating outside newspaper offices to see the scores posted. The Australasian commented that ‘In the annals of Australian cricket there never has been a match the result of which caused so much genuine astonishment’. The team travelled to South Australia before Christmas, taking the steamer to Adelaide, where they were driven to the Town Hall and again toasted with large amounts of champagne by the Mayor and his guests. Emmett had made little impression so far on the tour. In his 13 innings he had scored just 72 runs, and his 415 balls had brought just 13 wickets, compared to Peate’s record of over 100. He made a ‘merry’ 22 against South Australia, but was not particularly in form as England took on Australia at Melbourne on the last day of 1881. England won the toss and Ulyett, Shaw, Selby and Bates gave the visitors an excellent start. The score reached 227 before the fifth wicket fell, with Emmett was part of a steady collapse, and the visitors were all out for 294. In the Australia response of 320, Emmett took 2-61 in 35 overs, but the game ended as a draw Yorkshire Captain 1878-1883