Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

73 Australia, only Shrewsbury making significant scores. Emmett again made little contribution with either bat or ball, and at Melbourne, in what turned out to his final Test, he made 27 in his only innings in a drawn game. Emmett did not go unnoticed, however, as Alfred Shaw recalled later. Fielding alternatively at short slip or in the deep, Emmett did a lot of running in hot weather so that he sweated badly. His silk shirt began to billow out and appeared like a miniature balloon. As a result, Shaw wrote: Ladies tittered, the roysterers of the crowd guffawed, and Sammy Jones lay down on the wicket and roared. ‘What’s t’matter? innocently asked Emmett, but with a suspicion of rising anger in his tone. We all laughed then in chorus, and the more we laughed the redder and more angry did genial Tom become. At last he found out that the breeze had taken unwarranted liberties with his silk shirt at the same time a voice floated over the breeze, ‘Tom, your swag’s out’. For the rest of that tour ‘Tom, have you got your swag out?’ was a popular inquiry. 51 Shaw also recalled that with so few players on the tour, one always had to act as umpire. When asked, Emmett initially refused, arguing ‘There is sure to be an appeal, and I shall a make a fool of myself.’ Reluctantly, he agreed under pressure, and sure enough, he was soon asked to adjudicate on a tricky disputed catch. Uncertain whether it had carried, Emmett asked the batsman, Pilling, who said it had struck the ground. He then asked the wicket-keeper, who said it had struck his foot and gone to short slip. Emmett eventually gave him out, but said he would not umpire again, and apparently, stuck to this position for the rest of the tour. 52 Inevitably, the tour involved lots of exhausting travel, for example, by train over the Blue Mountains by the Great Western Railway, as well as beautiful scenery such as during the journey by steamer along the Waikato River. It also included many unusual experiences, as Emmett relayed in a letter to John Chester, a member of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club committee. On the voyage to Honolulu, the King of the Sandwich Islands, a fellow traveller, invited the cricketers to his cabin for a drink. Emmett recalled that he was ‘a very nice gentlemen, and speaks English well’. The King suggested to Emmett that he had ‘a singing face’ and asked him to perform. Emmett reportedly replied that he ‘never sang out of Yorkshire’, and Scotton and Bates instead did the honours. Emmett also commented that the matches in America had not been well attended, and should have been played on a Sunday, which was the day thousands of people turned out to watch baseball. Despite the fun, Emmett did not have a very successful tour – he only scored just over 100 runs in first-class games, with 27 his highest score, and he took just 10 wickets in first-class games at nearly 30. The touring side left Melbourne on 22 March on the Orient boat Chimborazo and reached Naples on 2 May, via a delayed passage through the Suez Canal, at which point the party split, with Midwinter, Bates, Barlow and Lillywhite travelling overland to Dover, and the remainder, Shaw, Shrewsbury, Scotton, Pilling and Emmett, travelling by steamer to Plymouth. Yorkshire Captain 1878-1883