Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

the ranks: chief among them were the Oscroft incident in May, 1875 and the spat between Tolley and W.G. in August, 1876. These were both on-the-pitch events, which were outside the control of the captain in the pavilion. This was emphatically not so in 1877 when Richard proved incapable of pulling the Gloucestershire game round in the face of Notts’ collapse against the bowling of W.G. On the field there are no indications that his bowlers ever refused to comply with his bowling changes, though William Oscroft implies that Richard’s management was not always very imaginative. Of the match between Kent and Notts at Canterbury in 1879, Oscroft told Old Ebor : ‘I got 140 in one innings – the highest individual score of that season in a county match. Kent had all their wickets to fall at lunch on the last day . . . it was just a question of getting Kent out before time. I was captain of Notts [Richard was preparing for his American tour], and Alfred Shaw and Morley were our principal bowlers. I went up to Shaw and said, “I think we’ll start with Barnes. I don’t think they can play him on this wicket.” The result justified my anticipations, for we got them all out by about 5 o’clock and won easily. Barnes’ analysis was 29 overs, 9 maidens, 43 runs, 7 wickets. After the match, Lord Harris came up to me and said, “Oscroft, what induced you to put Barnes on instead of Shaw after lunch?” I replied, “Why, my Lord? I felt sure that you couldn’t play him so well as Shaw on this wicket.” . . . His Lordship answered, “You were quite right . . . but you must bear in mind there isn’t another captain in England who would have substituted for Alfred Shaw at the commencement of an innings.”’ The other counties, save Yorkshire led by Tom Emmett, were all captained by amateurs, but few examples of rank-pulling over Richard have come to light. The MCC match at Lord’s in 1870 contained some anomalies in addition to the injury to Summers, but apart from the odd skirmish with Harris, Richard does seem to have held his own: and he was able to point to the fine record of the Nottinghamshire eleven under his captaincy. Notts played 104 matches in the ten seasons of Daft’s captaincy from 1871 to 1880. He played in the side in 95 of them, captaining it in all the matches in which he played. Notts won 47 of those matches, lost 21 and drew 27. In Richard’s time, the title of champion was awarded by the press as a matter of judgement, rather than through any ‘official’ Triumph and Tribulation 101