Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

agreed to engage five of the seven, Shaw and Shrewsbury together with Morley, Selby and Barnes, but not Scotton or Flowers: the players held together and withdrew their labour, so a week later when Notts played Lancashire, all seven were left out of the side and Richard came in. From then on the executive produced a succession of ad hoc sides, called by some ‘Holden’s Marionettes’. In early August, Wilfred Flowers rejoined the eleven for the match against Gloucestershire at Clifton, and made a powerful point in his own favour by taking 12 wickets for 85 runs. Subsequently, Selby and Barnes and then Morley returned to the fold before the end of the season of 1881, but Shaw and Shrewsbury did not return until the following spring. The improvised outfit won four matches, which included the defeat of Surrey at Trent Bridge and – wonderfully – of Gloucestershire at Clifton. Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual of 1882 summed up the unhappy episode: ‘The governing body had acted very unwisely in Daft’s case and established a precedent which proved very inconvenient. The only indictment was one of inconsistency . . . ’ The Notts dispute was made up by the next season, and the county’s cricket entered another period of prosperity, but 1881 must have been embarrassing for Richard. Newly elected to that Valhalla, the Notts Committee, he saw his side disintegrate in circumstances regarded by the majority of critics as highly prejudicial to his former colleagues, and found himself among their opposition, while the cause of the dispute was said to be a bad precedent arising from the Executive’s collusion with him! Meanwhile, Shaw and Shrewsbury had leisure to promote their business. Shrewsbury, intelligent, cool and a bit finicky, was the brains behind the new set-up and he lost no time in acquiring premises and advertising the business. The attitude of the partnership was a purely commercial one: any damage to Richard’s finances would be a matter for Richard. In his publicity, Shrewsbury coolly described himself as a ‘Member of American Team, 1879’ – Daft’s team. Meanwhile, Richard found his energies heavily engaged. Scores and Biographies gives particulars: ‘In 1881, he became mine host of the hotel on the Trent Bridge Ground, and with his brewery at Radcliffe-on-Trent and his cricket and athletic emporium in St. Peter’s Square [ sic ] in Nottingham, his hands were pretty full.’ Triumph and Tribulation 104