Lives in Cricket No 50 - Tom Emmett

94 The later years (1889-1904) be very popular with the Rugby lads.’ There remains evidence to support this and demonstrate that he established friendly relations with those he coached. A letter from Emmett to a boy, H.L.Macdonald, which was sent in June 1890, still exists. Given the circumstances of Emmett’s employment the letter is unsurprisingly deferential, but it also shows that Emmett had a broader interest in the future of those he came into contact with since he hoped that the boy’s stay at Rugby ‘will have a good influence on your future career and that your parents will always have cause to be proud of you.’ Three years later, Emmett said in an interview he had ‘never had a wrong word with anybody since I came. Everybody you know is in earnest about the game, from Dr Percival down to the little boys.’ The facilities were improving and there was room for seven or eight cricket pitches. One of Emmett’s most famous pupils at Rugby was P.F.Warner, who later captained Middlesex and England in a career which stretched to 1920. In a talk at the school in 1937, Warner referred to Emmett as his ‘headmaster’. 62 A few years after Emmett’s death, Warner wrote that: he was a splendid coach, if occasionally an excess of zeal led him to correct one too vehemently. ‘See here, Mr. Warner,’ he used to say, as he took the stump at the bowler’s end out of the ground and proceeded to tell one how to play some particular stroke. He always liked to see a boy hit—here, perhaps, was something of his own impetuous and energetic spirit—and he was always urging one to ‘lash at her,’ and nothing gave him greater joy than clean hard ‘punch,’ as he called it. Warner added that ‘Emmett’s motto for forward play was “Get the left leg well out to the bat,” and he used to allow us to hook a ball, though always warning us that there was an element of risk in it. “Do it by all means,” he used to say, “if you can, as it will bring you plenty of runs; but remember, it is not fundamentally a sound stroke.”’ In his autobiography, Warner remembered ‘lovely summers’ with Emmett, and recalled his ‘erect and active figure, with head thrown back, striding across Bigside in white flannels, and with a Yorkshire cap crowning his grey and well-shaped head.’ He said Emmett had had four rules. These were to be move the left foot to the ball when playing forward and bring the right leg up to the bat when playing back; no facing of the bowlers; ‘smell her, sir, smell her’; and in jumping out to drive, ‘If you come to her, come. You may as well be stumped by two feet as by one inch.’ 63 Warner also remembered that Emmett had not tried to teach every boy in a ‘stereotyped way’ and had allowed wide latitude in approach. However, he considered that he talked too much to be ‘an absolutely first-rate coach.’ As he put it, ‘He had so much to say on a minor point that there was nothing bigger left to say about essentials.’ 64 Despite this, Emmett’s approach at Rugby appeared to be supported by the Headmaster, Dr Percival, who arranged for a ‘completely equipped wooden shed’ to be built in which Emmett could bowl at the boys. There was some debate as to whether playing in the winter was good for the boys, but Percival’s response was that he had heard Shrewsbury and Gunn did so, and ‘they